Relations Between Ring Current Intensifications and the Sub-Auroral Electric Fields: IMAGE/HENA and Mid-Latitude Radar Observations

Details Relations Between Ring Current Intensifications and the Sub-Auroral Electric Fields: IMAGE/HENA and Mid-Latitude Radar Observations Relations Between Ring Current Intensifications and the Sub-Auroral Electric Fields: IMAGE/HENA and Mid-Latitude Radar Observations

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsa41a1402z&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SA41A-1402

Physics

2712 Electric Fields (2411), 2721 Field-Aligned Currents And Current Systems (2409), 2730 Magnetosphere: Inner, 2736 Magnetosphere/Ionosphere Interactions (2431)

Scientific paper

The sub-auroral electric fields are associated with the closure of the region-2 current system, which in turn is dominated by the currents driven by ring current pressure- and magnetic field gradients in the inner magnetosphere. Two features of the sub-auroral fields have been observed and modeled by various teams: the Sub-Auroral Polarization Stream (SAPS) on the dusk-side, and the reversal flow region on the dawn side. We compare simultaneous observations of the sub-auroral ionosphere by mid-latitude radars such as Wallops Radar Facility (part of SuperDARN), with global observations of the ring current obtained by the High Energy Neutral Atom (HENA) imager on board the IMAGE spacecraft. HENA images the ring current remotely by detecting energetic neutral atoms (ENA) produced by charge exchange between singly charged ions in the ring current and the neutral gas in exosphere and upper atmosphere. We compare several events where HENA observes an intensification of the ring current. To date there are about two dozen of simultaneous Wallops observations and ring current HENA observations (the IMAGE spacecraft stopped operating on 18 December, 2005). We investigate the sub-auroral flows during the Wallops-HENA conjunctions for 12 June, 1 December, and 10 December, 2005. We discuss to what extent the ionospheric features are related to SAPS and the reversal flow by also examining in-situ Ion Drift Meter (IDM) from the DMSP satellites, Field-aligned current (FAC) maps obtained from the Iridium satellites. We present and discuss the physical mechanisms of these electric fields by studying the Comprehensive Ring Current Model at APL (CRCM-A). The model reproduces the ring current through kinetic transport, computes the pressure-driven currents, closes them through a model ionosphere, and computes the resulting electric field, which then is used to update the electric field in the inner magnetosphere self-consistently.

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