Separation and Quantification of Ionospheric Convection Sources: 1. A New Technique

• Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
• Main Authors: Reistad, JP, Laundal, KM, Østgaard, N, Ohma, A, Haaland, S, Oksavik, K, Milan, SE
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Geophysical Union (AGU), Wiley 2019
• Subjects: SECS; convection; lobe reconnection; northward IMF; Antarctic; Canada; Norway; Omni; Antarc*; British Antarctic Survey
• Online Access: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019JA026634; http://hdl.handle.net/2381/45136; https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JA026634

This article is a companion to Reistad et al. (2019), https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JA026641. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/45137 This paper describes a novel technique that allows separation and quantification of different sources of convection in the high-latitude ionosphere. To represent the ionospheric convection electric field, we use the Spherical Elementary Convection Systems representation. We demonstrate how this technique can separate and quantify the contributions from different magnetospheric source regions to the overall ionospheric convection pattern. The technique is in particular useful for distinguishing the contributions of high-latitude reconnection associated with lobe cells from the low-latitude reconnection associated with Dungey two-cell circulation. The results from the current paper are utilized in a companion paper (Reistad et al., 2019, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JA026641) to quantify how the dipole tilt angle influences lobe convection cells. We also describe a relation bridging other representations of the ionospheric convection electric field or potential to the Spherical Elementary Convection Systems description, enabling a similar separation of convection sources from existing models. SuperDARN (Super Dual Auroral Radar Network) is an international collaboration involving more than 30 low‐power HF radars that are operated and funded by universities and research organizations in Australia, Canada, China, France, Italy, Japan, Norway, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. A large thanks to Evan Tomas from who we directly obtained the SuperDARN data. Raw files can be accessed via the SuperDARN data mirrors hosted by the British Antarctic Survey (https://www.bas.ac.uk/project/superdarn/#data) and University of Saskatchewan (https://superdarn.ca). We acknowledge the use of NASA/GSFC's Space Physics Data Facility (http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov) for OMNI data. Financial support has also been provided to the authors by the Research Council of Norway under the contract 223252. Peer-reviewed Publisher Version