Duskside Relativistic Electron Precipitation in the SAMPEX data set from 1992-2004

Evidence for duskside relativistic electron precipitation (DREP) within the Earth's outer radiation belt has been seen in several sets of high altitude balloon data (MAXIS, MINIS, INTERBOA). The DREP events have a characteristically short timescale. They are the hardest X-ray events seen from balloons with typical energy around 1MeV. They always occur in the evening hemisphere between 12-24 MLT. These events appear to be intense enough that they may represent the dominant loss mechanism in the outer electron belt for relativistic electrons. However, such evidence has rarely been seen in satellite data as DREP have been hard to distinguish from other forms of precipitation such as band precipitation and microbursts. Statistical evidence for duskside relativistic electron precipitations (DREP) is presented based on a survey of data collected by SAMPEX from 1992-2004. Correlations among event duration, intensity, spectral hardness and duskside MLT are observed in this sample.