Measuring the Dayside Thermospheric Resonse to Extreme Joule Heating Events Using SuperDARN and TIMED GUVI

A major goal of the NASA TIMED spacecraft is to understand the transfer of energy from the magnetosphere into the Mesosphere-Lower-Thermosphere-Ionosphere (MLTI) region. Joule and auroral particle heating at high latitudes are two processes by which magnetospheric energy can be deposited within the MLTI. In this session, we will present large-scale maps of dayside Joule heating rates obtained by combining ionospheric electric field measurements from the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) with estimates for the ionospheric Pedersen conductance obtained from TIMED Global Ultraviolet Imager (GUVI) auroral images. These Joule heating maps will be compared with maps of the GUVI O/N2 ratio, thereby providing a measure of the change in thermospheric composition associated with the Joule heating events and the subsequent transport of those perturbations via neutral winds.