'Breathing' Earth: Our planet's atmosphere expands and contracts on a regular basis in response to warm 'wind' blasted from the Sun.
Credit: Wikimedia
Marty Mlynczak of the U.S. space agency NASA's Langley Research Centre, in Virginia, was part of the team that looked at the pattern of fluctuations in the Earth's upper atmosphere's temperature. The nine-day cycle discovered there, he said, links three evenly spaced coronal holes.
"[If] they are 120 degrees apart, [then] every 9 days one comes along and bathes the Earth with high speed solar wind," Mlynczak said.
Forecasts to improve
Understanding the behaviour of the upper atmosphere and how it is likely to vary is undeniably handy, said Geoff Crowley, chief scientist of the Atmospheric and Space Technology Research Associates in San Antonio, Texas.
The findings will not only help scientists better predict the orbits of satellites and space debris, but may also help improve forecasts for how upper atmosphere conditions will affect satellite communications.
