This key science deals with investigating near-earth objects and how space weather affects the upper atmosphere, as well as how the upper atmosphere affects the lower atmosphere and how it affects human activities and vice versa.  It also aims to study the effect of man on earth’s climate.  NARIT’s first key science also has a goal of characterizing the atmosphere above astronomical observatories in Thailand. 

Near-earth objects or Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100 meters that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU.  Space weather includes phenomena such as cosmic rays, solar energetic particle events and coronal mass ejections.  Auroras, ionospheric scintillation and plasma bubbles, on the other hand, are some examples of phenomena that occur in the upper atmosphere.  In the lower atmosphere, atmospheric composition (e.g. greenhouse gases, air pollutants, short lived climate pollutants, aerosols and clouds) as well as tropical meteorology (e.g. thunderstorms and monsoons) are the main topics of interest.

The behavior and characteristics of these phenomena are not isolated, but are entwined and are in constant interaction with one another through physics, chemistry and even through biology.  Humans and society also has an effect particularly in the lower atmosphere (e.g. anthropogenic emissions and land-cover and land-use changes) modifying earth’s climate.  On a bigger picture, NARIT’s first key science aims to bring all of these concepts together in a concept called the global electric circuit (GEC) which is a massive collection of electrical currents traveling around the earth’s atmosphere from the surface to the ionosphere maintained by the earth’s magnetosphere, by thunderstorm or electrified clouds, by aerosols and by galactic cosmic rays.

Study of space affects on earth [Credit: NOAA]

Research team

Collaborators

1. Mahidol University, Thailand
2. Chiangmai University, Thailand
3. University of Phayao, Thailand
4. University of Cambridge, U.K.
5. Hydro - Informatics Institute, Thailand
6. Institute of Earth and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IEE, CAS)
7. Mahasarakham University, Thailand
8. Lampang Rajabhat University, Thailand
9. King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand
10. Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Beijing, China
11. National Astronomical and Space Administration, USA
12. National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA
13. University of California Irvine, USA