The determination of the Earth’s gravity field is the main goal of the dedicated gravity field missions CHAMP, GRACE and GOCE. The gravity field comprises always a static part and a much smaller timevariable one in the order of millimeters to centimeters, if expressed in geoid heights. As the measurements always consist of both parts, one has to separate them to get a highly accurate static fie...

Many physics-based models are used to study and monitor the terrestrial upper atmosphere. Each of these models has internal parameterizations that introduce bias if they are not tuned for a specific set of run conditions. This study uses Retrospective Cost Model Refinement (RCMR) to remove internal model bias in the Global Ionosphere Thermosphere Model (GITM) through parameter estimation. RCMR ...

At the present time there is an unprecedented opportunity to use satellite magnetometer data, as for example Oersted and CHAMP records, to improve our knowledge of the Earth’s magnetic field and its sources. These measurements contain contributions from the main magnetic field of the Earth, the crustal field as well as contributions coming from different exterior (ionospheric and magnetospheric...

The ability of Global Positioning System Radio Occultation (GPS/RO) to improve tropospheric profile retrievals was examined. Retrievals were performed using IR and MW radiometric measurements from the ATOVS (Advanced TIROS Operational Vertical Sounder) on current NOAA polar orbiting satellites and simulated high spectral resolution infrared measurements from the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (Cr...

The German geoscience satellite CHAMP (CHAllenging Minisatellite Payload, launched on July 15, 2000, Reigber et al., 2002) is in orbit now for more than 2 years. CHAMP's measurements are used to determine Earth's gravity and magnetic field and to derive precise information about vertical temperature, humidity and electron density distribution on a global scale using the innovative GPS radio occ...

Neutral thermospheric wind pattern at high latitudes obtained from cross-track acceleration measurements of the CHAMP satellite above both polar regions are used to deduce statistical neutral wind vorticity distributions and were analyzed in their dependence on the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF). The average pattern confirms the large duskside anticyclonic vortex seen in the average wind p...

We employ the Chandra Multiwavelength Project (ChaMP) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to study the fraction of X-ray-active galaxies in the field to z = 0.7. We utilize spectroscopic redshifts from SDSS and ChaMP, as well as photometric redshifts from several SDSS catalogs, to compile a parent sample of more than 100,000 SDSS galaxies and nearly 1,600 Chandra X-ray detections. Detailed ...

MEF2C is a MADS-box transcription factor required for cardiac myogenesis and morphogenesis. In MEF2C mutant mouse embryos, heart development arrests at the looping stage (embryonic day 9.0), the future right ventricular chamber fails to form, and cardiomyocyte differentiation is disrupted. To identify genes regulated by MEF2C in the developing heart, we performed differential array analysis cou...

[1] The equatorial electrojet (EEJ) is an eastward electric current on the day-side, flowing in a narrow band along the dip equator in the ionospheric E region. Recent magnetic observations from the CHAMP, Ørsted, and SAC-C satellites, comprising more than 95,000 dip equator crossings from 1999 to 2006, have provided an unprecedented longitudinal coverage of the EEJ magnetic signature. We have ...

S U M M A R Y The CHAMP magnetic field mission is providing highly reliable measurements from which the global lithospheric magnetic field can be determined in unprecedented resolution and accuracy. Using almost 5 yr of data, we derive our fourth generation lithospheric field model termed MF4, which is expanded to spherical harmonic degree and order 90. After subtracting from the full magnetic ...