Uncertainty Quantification of the Ionosphere-Thermosphere with WAM-IPE for varying solar wind conditions

One of the most frequent space weather events in the ionosphere-thermosphere
(IT) system, equatorial and low latitude ionospheric
irregularities can have a significant effect on radio transmission in the
ionosphere. In order to narrow down the input parameters and
identify the most crucial external drivers, it is necessary to quantify
the uncertainty in the IT system.
In this study, the uncertainties of the IT conditions simulated by the
Whole Atmosphere Model-Ionosphere Plasmasphere Electrodynamics
(WAM-IPE) forecast system for verying solar wind drivers will be
estimated. Using an advanced multichannel variational autoencoder
((MCVAE), the historical solar wind density, velocity, and
interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) data are gathered to generate
synthetic data for driving the model. We drive WAM-IPE and produce
an ensemble of simulations using the synthetic solar wind parameters.
Then, polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) is used to approximate the
quantities of interest (QoI) and to estimate the statistical metrics of the
QoI based on the expansion coefficients. Using the PCE-based UQ
and Sobol index, we show the uncertainties and global sensitivity
analysis results of the electron density, plasma flow, and neutral
winds. Details regarding the universal time, local
time, and vertical variances are provided.