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Earth, Planets and Space
Fig. 3 | Earth, Planets and Space

Fig. 3

From: Improving the estimation of thermospheric neutral density via two-step assimilation of in situ neutral density into a numerical model

Fig. 3

Panel a shows the scale factor between the neutral densities computed with NRLMSIS 2.0 and the neutral densities derived from the CHAMP accelerometer. The argument of latitude is the angle–measured on the orbital plane–between the ascending node and the satellite. Values of 0\(^{\circ }\) and 180\(^{\circ }\) correspond to the night side and day side equator, respectively. At 90\(^{\circ }\) and 270\(^{\circ }\) CHAMP is closest the north and south pole, respectively. The solid black line is the border between day and night side. The dashed black line marks the point where the satellite is closest to the poles. The solid blue line in panel b is the median scale factor at the corresponding argument of latitude. The solid blue line in panel c is the median scale factor at the corresponding orbit. The light blue areas in panels b and c mark the interval between the 25th and 75th percentile. Panels d, e, f show the scale factors filtered with a 3-hourly low-pass filter analogously to panels a, b, c

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