Statistical Birkeland Current Distributions From Magnetic Field Observations by the Iridium Constellation

Details Statistical Birkeland Current Distributions From Magnetic Field Observations by the Iridium Constellation Statistical Birkeland Current Distributions From Magnetic Field Observations by the Iridium Constellation

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsm11a0294k&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SM11A-0294

Physics

2407 Auroral Ionosphere (2704), 2409 Current Systems (2721), 2431 Ionosphere/Magnetosphere Interactions (2736), 2736 Magnetosphere/Ionosphere Interactions (2431)

Scientific paper

Birkeland currents play an important role in the transport of energy and momentum to the ionosphere and conveying stress between the magnetosphere and the ionosphere. They therefore represent a fundamental signature of the solar wind--magnetosphere--ionosphere interaction. The distribution and intensity of the large- scale Birkeland currents depends on magnitude and direction of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) and the solar wind electric field and on the ionospheric conductivity. We present the statistical analysis of over 3000 two-dimensional Birkeland current distributions from the Iridium constellation and examine the dependence of the morphology of the current features on the direction of the IMF. The Iridium statistical distributions not only reflect a number of known characteristics of the Birkeland currents but also reveal new findings with respect to previous statistical models. For example, Region-0 currents are found to be absent during southward IMF and for northward IMF the Region-2 currents are weak and narrowly confined. The Iridium distributions also show a much clearer transition from southward to northward IMF than seen in previous models, which is essential for high-fidelity comparisons with predictions from global geospace simulation codes.

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