Ionospheric E-region response to solar-geomagnetic storms observed by TIMED/SABER and application to IRI storm-model development

The large thermospheric infrared radiance enhancements observed from the TIMED/SABER experiment during recent solar storms provide an exciting opportunity to study the influence of solar-geomagnetic disturbances on the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. In particular, nighttime enhancements of 4.3 μm emission, due to vibrational excitation and radiative emission by NO+, provide an excellent proxy to study and analyze the response of the ionospheric E-region to auroral electron dosing and storm-time enhancements to the E-region electron density. In this paper, we give a status report of on-going work on model and data analysis methodologies of deriving NO+ 4.3 μm volume emission rates, a proxy for the storm-time E-region response, and the approach for deriving an empirical storm-time correction to IRI E-region NO+ and electron densities.