Dynamics of the Neutral Thermosphere

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This is a 3-year instrumentation project to refurbish and upgrade an existing Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) at the Arecibo Observatory into a modern capable facility. Resulting from the effort will be a dual line imaging FPI with new hardware and software that will have greater sensitivity, will be automated and remotely operable, and will be able to simultaneously measure E-region and F-region neutral winds. The upgrade will allow thermospheric neutral winds and temperatures to be measured routinely and continuously with high accuracy at the Arecibo Observatory. Ground-based FPIs constitute a crucial source of wind information and the activity would secure and improve the capability of the Arecibo instrument, which is located at a key location with respect to electrodynamic processes. Specifically, the upgrade will allow for a continuation of an ongoing thermospheric climatology that has been collected at Arecibo for more than 30 years. The automated data collection will increase the amount of storm time data, needed to understand how the thermospheric wind field is modified during periods of high magnetic activity.Community infrastructure building and service is at the heart of the activity. Processed data will be made readily and freely available via the existing aeronomy community Madrigal database and will facilitate a wide range of upper atmosphere dynamics and thermodynamics science investigations. Such studies fit within the larger context of Global Climate Change research. The facility and data will also be used in support of various educational activities.