Applications of Remote Sensing in Monitoring Ionospheric and Atmospheric Physics

Dear Colleagues,

The ionosphere, where atoms and molecules are partly ionized by solar radiation, constitutes a significant part of Earth’s upper atmosphere. The free electrons in the ionosphere can significantly affect the propagation of radio waves. The ionosphere plays a critical role in communications and navigation systems in our daily life. Therefore, developing our understanding of this section of our atmosphere is of great importance for human activities. The ionosphere has strong temporal and spatial variability. Being coupled downward to the lower atmosphere and upward to the magnetosphere, the ionosphere is not only affected by solar activities, but also by the lower atmospheric waves and geomagnetic disturbances. The ionosphere is also controlled by photochemical, dynamic, and electrodynamic processes. As a result, there are many open questions in the ionospheric community, such as the day-to-day variation in the ionosphere, ionospheric irregularities, ionospheric longitudinal structure, the forecasting of the ionosphere, ionospheric storms, etc.

The middle and upper atmosphere are located at the end of the solar terrestrial energy transfer chain and play important roles space science research. The middle and upper atmosphere comprise the passage zone for various spacecraft and the residence zone for low-orbit spacecraft. Therefore, the heating and cooling process, the temporal and spatial variability, and the transient structure of the atmosphere at this altitude have significant impact on the safety and precise orbit entry of spacecraft.

With the development of modern techniques, many methods of remote sensing of the ionosphere and the atmosphere, including ionosondes, radars, radio occultations, GNSS receivers, and airglow observations from the ground and spacecraft, etc., have emerged to assist in further understanding the ionosphere and the atmosphere.

In this Special Issue, we aim to improve the understanding of ionospheric and atmospheric physics by the application of remote sensing of the ionosphere and atmosphere. Both original research and review papers are welcome.

We encourage contributions to topics including but not limited to:

• Spatial and temporal distributions in the ionosphere/atmosphere
• Ionospheric irregularities
• Ionospheric/thermosphric modeling
• Ionospheric data assimilation
• Ionosphere-Thermosphere coupling
• Traveling ionospheric/atmospheric disturbances
• Remote sensing by radio waves and optical imaging
• Ionospheric/thermospheric weather

This Special Issue is the second edition of Remote Sensing Special Issue entitled Applications of Remote Sensing in Monitoring Ionospheric Physics and Ionospheric Weather Forecasting.

Dr. Chunhua Jiang
Dr. Huijun Le
Dr. Ercha Aa
Dr. Zheng Li
Guest Editors

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