Outline

Background

  Global phenomena observed in the Earth's upper atmosphere are the results of many complex processes, such as the energy and momentum input from the Sun (e.g., solar radiation and solar wind), the energy and momentum transport by atmospheric waves from the lower atmosphere, and various internal phenomena (e.g., electromagnetic energy transport, plasma convection, chemical reaction). To understand the mechanism of the long-term variation in the upper atmosphere, therefore, it is important to analyze various data (e.g., wind velocity and temperature in the atmosphere, auroral images, geomagnetic field, solar activity index, etc.) obtained by the global ground-based network observation.

  So far, the upper atmospheric data have been individually archived and opened to public by each university or institute, however, most of the data have been used only in the limited research field. In addition, there were some cases where the data were analyzed by only a limited number of researchers and never opened to public.

Goals of the Project

We have three action plans in the third term (FY2021-) as follows:

1. Promotion of Science activities in the Solar-Terrestrial Physics (STP) field

   • Support for publication and management of research data from domestic and international STP projects.
   • Enhancement of the research infrastructure to handle a wide variety of data in a complex manner.
   • Promotion of collaborative research in the STP field.

2. International contribution and capacity building

   • Contribution to the training of young researchers in the STP field through workshops and outreach activities.
   • Promotion of international collaborative research in cooperation with researchers in Asia, Africa and other regions.

3. Promotion of scientific research on innovative areas

   • Application of many methods in data science field to the STP field in collaboration with data scientists.
   • Development of new research areas in collaboration with researchers in different and close research fields.

  In the first phase (FY2009-2014), we developed and released the scientific database and analysis software of the upper atmospheric data to promote the comprehensive analysis.

  In the second phase, (FY2015-2020), we improved the database and analysis software developed in the first phase and released new data service named "IUGONET Type-A". We contributed to the training of young researchers and the growing of the STP field by promoting these products.

  In the third phase (FY2021-FY2026), we will accelerate our activities. We will promote to establish data publication, analysis infrastructure system. We also promote to build the integrated analysis system for big scientific data, including high-resolution data, simulation data, and reanalysis data. In addition, we will expand these activities to Asia, Africa, South America, and other regions to build an international network and promote international collaborative research.

Expected effects

  The integrated database is an important tool that enables access to various data distributed across many databases and promotes interdisciplinary study. In the upper atmospheric science, such a tool is expected to be essential to clarify the mechanisms of various phenomena, such as the interaction between multiple layers in the Earth's complex system, the disturbances due to the interaction, and the long-term variation in the upper atmosphere. There is also a possibility that combining various types of data from many different science fields makes new discovery that has never been reported before.