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Abstract

The variability of the thermosphere and ionosphere is significantly driven by atmospheric waves originating from the lower and middle atmosphere. The forcing is either by direct shaping of the wind and temperature field or by depositing energy through wave breaking or dissipation. Whole atmosphere General Circulation Models (GCMs) have played an important role in investigating this connection. For example, GCMs which include as realistic as possible representation of the lower and middle atmosphere are used to drive ionospheric models or model components. The ICON (Icosahedral Nonhydrostatic Weather and Climate) model is the weather and climate model at the German Weather Service (DWD) and is hosted by DWD and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. ICON has been developed to be a community-driven model. This contribution will discuss the capability of the UA-ICON (Upper Atmosphere-ICON) version to simulate general circulation and temperature patterns and its variability up to about 130 km. The model covers the area of the E-region where the major part of the wind-driven ionospheric dynamo takes place. However, the model currently only includes the neutral atmosphere with a parameterization for ion drag, and electrodynamics have not yet been implemented. We show the variability in the simulation results due to tidal and planetary wave modulation. We compare them with observations such as neutral winds by TIDI and MIGHTI or temperatures by SABER. For example, the diurnal westward-migrating solar tide with wave-number 1 simulated by UA-ICON corresponds well in both phase and amplitude with the satellite observations, among others.