Comparisons of Thermal Plasma Upflow observed on DMSP with escaping ion fluxes observed at Polar during geomagnetic quiet intervals

Most magnetospheric models lack species dependent dynamics. O+ is known to be present in the magnetosphere and to have a significant impact on some magnetospheric processes. One of the significant hurdles to including heavy ions such as O+ into magnetospheric models is a method to calculate or estimate the fraction of upwelling heavy ions with less than escape energy that acquire escape energy above the ionosphere. This paper presents a statistical comparison of thermal plasma upwelling flux with the flux of escaping ions. The thermal plasma is measured at 800 km by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Special Sensors-Ions Electrons and Scintillation (SSIES) instrument suite. The escaping flux of ions is measured by the Toroidal Imaging Mass-Angle Spectrograph (TIMAS) on the Polar spacecraft at ~7,000 km over the southern polar cap. This is a climatological study and as such focuses on geomagnetically quiet intervals determined by Dst less than -50nT during the solar minimum period (1996 - 1998) of solar cycle 23.