Identification

Title

Theoretical study: Influence of different energy sources on the cusp neutral density enhancement

Abstract

Simulations with the Global Ionosphere-Thermosphere Model (GITM) show that both Poynting flux and soft electron precipitation are important in producing neutral density enhancements near 400 km altitude in the cusp that have been observed by the Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP) satellite. Imposing a Poynting flux of 75 mW/m² in the cusp within the model increases the neutral density by 34%. The direct heating from 100 eV, 2 mW/m² soft electron precipitation produces only a 5% neutral density enhancement at 400 km. However, the associated enhanced ionization in the F-region from the electron precipitation leads to a neutral density enhancement of 24% through increased Joule heating. Thus, the net effect of the soft electron is close to 29%, and the combined influence of Poynting flux and soft particle precipitation causes a more than 50% increase in neutral density at 400 km, which is consistent with CHAMP observations in extreme cases. The effect of electron precipitation on the neutral density at 400 km decreases sharply with increasing characteristic energy such that 900 eV electrons have little effect on neutral density. Finally, the impact of 2 keV, 0.3 mW/m² proton precipitation on the neutral density is negligible due to a lowering of the altitude of Joule heating.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7ww7jk2

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2013-05-03T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact