Identification

Title

Mesoscale F region neutral winds associated with quasi-steady and transient nightside auroral forms

Abstract

High-latitude neutral winds often circulate in a two-cell pattern as driven by large-scale auroral forcing. However, auroral forcing also occurs in various types of mesoscale forms (i.e., tens to hundreds of kilometers in space and a few to tens of minutes in time) and contains more energy input over mesoscale than large scale. A question arises as to whether and how winds respond to the mesoscale forcing. We characterize F region winds associated with various types of auroral forms using scanning Doppler imagers, auroral imagers, and radars. The auroras examined include a quasi-steady east-west elongated arc, a quasi-steady Harang aurora, transient streamers, and a transient substorm westward traveling surge. We find that winds exhibit distinct spatial structures, appearing as channels, vortices, and reversals. Such structures are consistent with the structures of the plasma flows associated with the auroras. Winds exhibit a temporal evolution very similar to the plasma flows and reach maximum perturbations only <similar to 20 min after the flows. The above results suggest that the thermosphere is closely coupled to the ionosphere/magnetosphere through the ion drag force. The <similar to 20-min time scale can be partially explained by the strong ionization effect associated with the auroras and partially by the fact that the wind perturbations do not approach the flow perturbations but halt at similar to 20% possibly due to momentum forces other than the ion drag.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7tm7f2q

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

2018-09-28T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

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Conformity

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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