Tidal effects on the thermosphere

Theoretical understanding of the earth's atmosphere is not possible without accounting for tidal waves and their interactions. In the thermosphere, tides represent the dominant motion system. Current observational efforts are aimed at providing tidal morphologies, i.e., maps of the vertical profiles of the tidal fields as a function of time for various locations. These are in hand for the mesosphere and have proved extraordinarily useful in deriving appropriate inputs for numerical models of the thermosphere. The basic latitudinal, seasonal, and solar cycle variation of the tides in the thermosphere is much less well known but the advent of coordinated global multi-day campaigns promises to ameliorate the situation. Progress would be facilitated by agreement on a standard data reduction procedure. Theoretical efforts are focused on simulating the observed morphologies and understanding the day to day variations while investigating mutual interactions and feedback between the mean atmosphere and the tidal, gravity, and planetary waves.