Evaluating F10.7 and F30 radio fluxes as long-term solar proxies of energy deposition in the thermosphere

Qian, Liying; Mursula, Kalevi

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-43-175-2025

Articles | Volume 43, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-43-175-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Long-term trends in the stratosphere–mesosphere–thermosphere–ionosphere...

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-43-175-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 43, issue 1

Regular paper

| Highlight paper

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25 Feb 2025

Regular paper | Highlight paper |

| 25 Feb 2025

Evaluating F10.7 and F30 radio fluxes as long-term solar proxies of energy deposition in the thermosphere

Liying Qian and Kalevi Mursula

Data sets

Orbit derived density J. T. Emmert https://map.nrl.navy.mil/map/pub/nrl/orbit_derived_density/

Evaluating F10.7 and F30 Radio Fluxes as Long-Term Solar Proxies of Energy Deposition in the Thermosphere Liying Qian https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13909713

Evaluating F10.7 and F30 Radio Fluxes as Long-Term Solar Proxies of Energy Deposition in the Thermosphere Liying Qian and Kalevi Mursula https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13909713

Short summary

We study how well the F10.7 and F30 solar radio fluxes have represented solar energy input in the thermosphere in the last 60 years. We found that increased saturation of radio fluxes at recent solar minima leads to an overestimation of solar energy, which changes the relation between thermospheric parameters and F10.7, but this is not an issue for F30 because of a relative increase in F30 with respect to F10.7. This explains why F30 has been found to represent solar energy better than F10.7.