ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Space Physics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2025.1666096
Thermospheric Wind and Temperature Observations from El Leoncito Observatory in Southern South America
Provisionally accepted
- 1Center for Space Physics, Boston University, Boston, United States
- 2Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, United States
- 3Space Weather Technology, Research, and Education Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, United States
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A Fabry-Perot Interferometer (FPI) installed at El Leoncito Observatory, Argentina (31.8 o S, 69.3 o W, 18 o mag lat) provides data on neutral winds and temperature over Southern South America, a region lacking ground-based thermospheric observations. We present the climatology of neutral winds obtained from 630.0 nm airglow emissions. Results are shown for different seasons and different levels of solar activity. Temperature results are shown only for medium to high solar activity conditions. Modeled neutral winds show better agreement during high solar acivity conditions. Modeled temperatures underestimate the observed values and do not reproduce midnight temperature maximum observations. These observations will help to improve model predictions of thermospheric parameters for this region.
Keywords: themospheric winds, FPI, 630 nm airglow, Neutral temperature, Low latitude
Received: 15 Jul 2025; Accepted: 18 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Martinis, Meriwether and Navarro. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Carlos Martinis, Center for Space Physics, Boston University, Boston, United States
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