Dr. Donald Thompson
received B.S. degrees (cum laude) in Physics and Applied Mathematics
from Weber State College in 1983 and his Ph.D. degree in Physics
from Utah State University in 1990.
Since graduating from
Utah State University, Dr. Thompson has been employed at USU, initially
as a Postdoctoral Fellow, and presently as a Research Scientist.
Dr. Thompson has considerable experience in the reduction, quality
control, and assimilation of various data sources related to the
Earth’s ionosphere, including ionosonde ionograms (in both
virtual and real height) and total electron content derived from
global positioning satellite phase delay measurements. In addition,
he has worked extensively in the development, testing, mission planning,
operation, and data analysis of instruments flown on space shuttles,
several sounding rocket missions, and a package of in-situ plasma
instruments to be installed on the international space station.
Dr. Thompson has been
integral in the development and testing of the USU Global Assimilation
of Ionospheric Measurements (GAIM) model. He has used his experiences
with measurement data to create automated algorithms for data handling
and quality assurance for the GAIM. In addition, Dr. Thompson has
extensive experience with computer programming, system administration,
and clustering. Dr. Thompson has installed an inexpensive cluster
of over 40 Linux computers that have enabled the GAIM model development
to proceed. He has implemented various near-real-time versions of
the GAIM model that automatically obtain data via the Internet,
quality control the data, assimilate the data, and produce three-dimensional
time-dependent electron density distributions and associated graphics.
Selected Publications
Thompson, D. C., L.
Scherliess, J. J. Sojka, and R. W. Schunk, The Utah State University
Gauss-Markov Kalman Filter of the ionosphere: The effect of slant
TEC and electron density profile data on model fidelity, J.
Atmos. Solar-Terr. Phys.. doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2005.10.011,
2006.
Scherliess, L., R. W.
Schunk, J. J. Sojka, D. Thompson, and L. Zhu, The USU GAIM Gauss-Markov
Kalman filter model of the ionosphere: Model description and validation,
J. Geophys. Res., submitted, 2006.
Schunk, R. W., L. Scherliess,
J. J. Sojka, D. C. Thompson, and L. Zhu, Ionospheric weather forecasting
on the horizon, Space Weather, 3, S08007, doi:10.1029/2004SW000138,
2005.
Schunk, R. W., L. Scherliess,
J. J. Sojka, D. C. Thompson, D. N. Anderson, M. Codrescu, C. Minter,
T. J. Fuller-Rowell, R. A. Heelis, M. Hairston, and B. Howe, Global
Assimilation of Ionospheric Measurements (GAIM), Radio Sci.,
39, RS1S02, doi:10.1092/2002RS002794, 2004.
Scherliess, L., R. W.
Schunk, J. J. Sojka, and D. C. Thompson, Development of a physics-based
reduced state Kalman filter for the ionosphere, Radio Sci.,
39, RS1S04, doi:10.1029/2002RS002797, 2004.
Swenson, C. M., D. C.
Thompson, and C. Fish, The Floating Potential Measurement Unit,
Proceedings of the 41st Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit,
AIAA-2003-1081.
Sojka, J. J., D. C.
Thompson, T. W. Bullett, and J. J. Makela, Assimilation Ionosphere
Model: Development and testing with combined ionospheric campaign
Caribbean measurements, Radio Sci., 36, 247-259, 2001.
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