Speaker
Description
The energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earths magnetosphere fuels the Energetic Particle Precipitation (EPP). EPP refers to highly energetic electrons and protons that are accelerated into the atmosphere, mainly in the polar regions. This energetic particles influence the atmospheric chemical composition by producing nitric oxides(NOx) and hydrogen oxides (HOx), among others, which both are associated with an ozone(O3) loss.
Auroral electrons(<30 keV) can penetrate to altitudes around the mesopause, where it will produce NOx, which are quite long-lived during polar winter and can be transported down into the lower mesosphere and stratosphere, where it will effectively destroy ozone.
The medium energy electrons(MEE), with higher energies (30 keV–1000 keV), can penetrate further down into the atmosphere, reaching the lower mesosphere, and increasing the levels of NOx and HOx, which will result in mesospheric and stratospheric ozone loss.
Including MEE into our current climate models will lead to more ozone depletion, which will cause an effective change in temperature in the mesosphere and stratosphere, resulting in a change on the zonal winds, i.e., a change in the dynamics of the atmosphere?
