Identification

Title

Self-consistent modeling of electron precipitation and responses in the ionosphere: Application to low-altitude energization during substorms

Abstract

We report a new modeling capability that self-consistently couples physics-based magnetospheric electron precipitation with its impact on the ionosphere. Specifically, the ring current model RAM-SCBE is two-way coupled to an ionospheric electron transport model GLOW (GLobal airglOW), representing a significant improvement over previous models, in which the ionosphere is either treated as a 2-D spherical boundary of the magnetosphere or is driven by empirical precipitation models that are incapable of capturing small-scale, transient variations. The new model enables us to study the impact of substorm-associated, spectrum-resolved electron precipitation on the 3-D ionosphere. We found that after each substorm injection, a high-energy tail of precipitation is produced in the dawn sector outside the plasmapause, by energetic electrons (10 < E < 100 keV) scattered by whistler-mode chorus waves. Consequently, an ionospheric sublayer characterized by enhanced Pedersen conductivity arises at unusually low altitude (similar to 85 km), with its latitudinal width of similar to 5-10 degrees in the auroral zone. The sublayer structure appears intermittently, in correlation with recurrent substorm injections. It propagates eastward from the nightside to the dayside in the same drift direction of source electrons injected from the plasma sheet, resulting in global impact within the ionosphere. This study demonstrates the model's capability of revealing complex cross-scale interactions in the geospace environment.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7wd43c1

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

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South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-07-12T00:00:00Z

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