Identification

Title

Effects of high-latitude ionospheric electric field variability on global thermospheric Joule heating and mechanical energy transfer rate

Abstract

Effects of high-latitude ionospheric electric field variability on the Joule heating and mechanical energy transfer rate are investigated by incorporating realistic spatial and temporal characteristics of electric field variability derived from observations into the forcing of a thermosphere ionosphere electrodynamic general circulation model. First, the characteristics of subgrid-scale variability are examined from a spectral analysis of Dynamic Explorer-2 (DE-2) plasma drift measurements. The analysis reveals that the subgrid-scale electric field varies with magnetic latitude, magnetic local time, interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), and season in a manner distinct from that of the resolved-scale electric field and of the climatological electric field. The subgrid-scale electric field varies strongly with season, and its magnitude averaged over the polar region does not depend on IMF. On the other hand, the resolved-scale electric field depends less on season but more on IMF. Second, the spatial-temporal structure of resolved-scale electric fields are characterized from various electromagnetic observations taken during the storm period of January 10-11, 1997, using a space-time covariance model derived from the DE-2 observations. Finally, the modeling results show that the amount of Joule heating and mechanical energy transfer rate in the thermosphere is significantly altered by taking into account the electric field variability and its space-time structure. Additional electromagnetic energy due to the electric field variability dissipates in the ionosphere almost exclusively as Joule heating if the variability has no spatial and temporal correlation. However, the spatially and temporally correlated electric field variability has seasonally dependent effects on the mechanical energy transfer rate.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7dv1k1b

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

2008-07-23T00:00:00Z

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