Thermospheric neutral winds are a key driver of the coupled thermosphere-ionosphere system and can be the most important driver when modeling ionospheric densities and temperatures. We present a climatology of thermospheric neutral wind components (meridional and zonal) measured with the 630.0 nm nightglow Fabry-Perot interferometer at Arecibo Observatory from 1980 to 2010. With these data set an empirical climatological model was developed that accounted for the dependencies of time and season as well as solar and geomagnetic activities. This also provides a means to extract the associated long-term trend simultaneously. These dependencies of the model are important for the understanding of any long-term changes related to geomagnetic and solar activity.

The main finding of this study was the detection of a seasonal and local time dependence of the response of the thermospheric neutral winds to solar and geomagnetic activity. In addition, there is a long-term trend in the thermospheric neutral wind, which can be of a larger magnitude than the variation found in the seasonal, solar cycle, and geomagnetic activity effects. A major signature of this trend over the last 30 years was an increase in the meridional northward component up to 1.4 m/s/year before midnight local time during the summer.