The NCAR TIEGCM is a time dependent, three-dimensional model of the
thermosphere and ionosphere that solves the fully coupled,
nonlinear, hydrodynamic, thermodynamic, and continuity equations of
the neutral gas self-consistently with the ion energy, ion momentum,
and ion continuity equations using a finite differencing scheme for
spatial and temporal variations (Roble et al., 1988, Richmond et
al., 1992). It has 25 constant-pressure levels in the vertical
extending from approximately 97 km to 500 km in altitude and a 5o x
50 degree latitude and longitude grid in its base configuration.
CISM utilizes the TIEGCM to model the Thermosphere and Ionosphere as
part of the Coupled Magnetospherer-Ionosphere-Thermosphere (CMIT) model.
This movie shows the change in electron density computed by TIEGCM as simualtion time advances. You may see rendering artifacts in this animation. These are a result of the video compression that YouTube uses and not part of the original data. The high-resolution version does not have these artifacts. Click here to download a high-resolution version of this movie