Identification

Title

Mapping high-latitude ionospheric electrodynamics with SuperDARN and AMPERE

Abstract

An assimilative procedure for mapping high-latitude ionospheric electrodynamics is developed for use with plasma drift observations from the Super Dural Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) and magnetic perturbation observations from the Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment (AMPERE). This procedure incorporates the observations and their errors, as well as two background models and their error covariances (estimated through empirical orthogonal function analysis) to infer complete distributions of electrostatic potential and vector magnetic potential in the high-latitude ionosphere. The assimilative technique also enables objective error analysis of the results. Various methods of specifying height-integrated ionospheric conductivity, which is required by the procedure, are implemented and evaluated quantitatively. The benefits of using both SuperDARN and AMPERE data to solve for both electrostatic and vector magnetic potentials, rather than using the data sets independently or solving for just electrostatic potential, are demonstrated. Specifically, solving for vector magnetic potential improves the specification of field-aligned currents (FACs), and using both data sets together improves the specification of features in regions lacking one type of data (SuperDARN or AMPERE). Additionally, using the data sets together results in a better correspondence between large-scale features in the electrostatic potential distribution and those in the FAC distribution, as compared to using SuperDARN data alone to infer electrostatic potential and AMPERE data alone to infer FACs. Finally, the estimated uncertainty in the results decreases by typically ∼20% when both data sets rather than just one are included.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7xg9sbr

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

2015-07-01T00:00:00Z

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