Publications related to the GRACE Missions (no abstracts)

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The Role of Neutral Winds in Polar Cap Patch Instability Growth

Halter, Bryce F., Malaspina, David, Roddy, Patrick A., Maruyama, Naomi, and Andersson, Laila, 2026. The Role of Neutral Winds in Polar Cap Patch Instability Growth. Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics), 131(7):e2025JA034673, doi:10.1029/2025JA034673.

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@ARTICLE{2026JGRA..13134673H,
       author = {{Halter}, Bryce F. and {Malaspina}, David and {Roddy}, Patrick A. and {Maruyama}, Naomi and {Andersson}, Laila},
        title = "{The Role of Neutral Winds in Polar Cap Patch Instability Growth}",
      journal = {Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics)},
     keywords = {polar cap patch, neutral wind, thermosphere, gradient drift instability, ionosphere},
         year = 2026,
        month = jul,
       volume = {131},
       number = {7},
          eid = {e2025JA034673},
        pages = {e2025JA034673},
     abstract = "{Polar cap patches are regions of dense plasma in the polar cap that
        convect from noon to midnight, moving against the neutral gas
        background. The gradient drift instability (GDI) destabilizes
        the edge of these patches as they convect, yet the rate of this
        destabilization is not well known due to the scarcity of
        coincident neutral wind and plasma measurements. Polar cap
        patches detected by Swarm with conjunction measurements from
        GRACE-FO are assessed for their GDI growth time with and without
        the neutral wind and for high and low collisionality regimes.
        This analysis shows significant differences in growth times with
        and without the neutral wind, and that the low collisionality
        growth times are different by a factor of 65\%. These results
        demonstrate that coincident plasma and neutral wind measurements
        are essential for accurately determining how the GDI, and by
        extension polar cap patches, evolve.}",
          doi = {10.1029/2025JA034673},
       adsurl = {https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2026JGRA..13134673H},
      adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

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