Boundary-oriented convection and particle precipitation patterns for IMF Bz southward dominant conditions and their impacts on Joule heating: Preliminary results
Abstract
At Earth's high latitudes, the electromagnetic energy from the magnetosphere dissipates into the ionosphere and thermosphere (I-T) system, of which the primary sink is Joule heating. However, it is still challenging to precisely specify the Joule heating rate in general circulation models (GCMs). Part of the difficulty lies in the specifications of high-latitude electric field and particle precipitation in GCMs. Typically, the high-latitude electric field and particle precipitation are specified independently by empirical models, which represent the averaged electric field and particle precipitation as a function of magnetic latitude (MLAT) and magnetic local time (MLT). This leads to notable inconsistencies between the model and observations. For example, the model patterns show smoother transitions across the convection reversal boundaries (CRBs) and aurora boundaries (ABs) than the observations. In addition, the model CRBs and poleward ABs are not always aligned in a manner consistent with the observations. These inconsistences can be improved if the simultaneous particle and convection data are binned according to the embedded boundaries in the convection and particle precipitation. Therefore, in this study, we adopt a boundary-oriented approach to bin the electric field and particle precipitation data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellite observations for IMF Bz southward dominant conditions to generate new electric field and particle precipitation patterns and compare them with patterns generated by using fixed-MLAT-MLT coordinate. Furthermore, the patterns generated by the boundary-oriented and fixed-MLAT-MLT approaches are implemented into the Global Ionosphere Thermosphere Model (GITM) to investigate how the Joule heating estimation can be affected.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMSA41B3482Z
- Keywords:
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- 2431 Ionosphere/magnetosphere interactions;
- IONOSPHEREDE: 2437 Ionospheric dynamics;
- IONOSPHEREDE: 2704 Auroral phenomena;
- MAGNETOSPHERIC PHYSICSDE: 2788 Magnetic storms and substorms;
- MAGNETOSPHERIC PHYSICS