Variability of dayside convection and motions of the cusp/cleft aurora

Lockwood, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7397-2172, Moen, J., Cowley, S. W. H., Farmer, A. D., Løvhaug, U. P., Lühr, H. and Davda, V. N. (1993) Variability of dayside convection and motions of the cusp/cleft aurora. Geophysical Research Letters, 20 (11). pp. 1011-1014. ISSN 00948276 doi: 10.1029/93GL00846

Abstract/Summary

We present measurements of the ionospheric plasma flow over the range of invariant latitudes 71–76°, observed at 10-second resolution using both the EISCAT radars, with simultaneous observations of the 630 nm cusp/cleft aurora made by a meridian-scanning photometer at Ny Ålesund, Svalbard. A major increase in the trans-auroral voltage from 5 to 40 kV (associated with sunward convection in the early afternoon sector) is found to follow a southward motion of the aurora and coincide with the onset of regular transient auroral breakup events. It is shown that these observations are consistent with recent theoretical work on how ionospheric flows are excited by time-dependent reconnection at the dayside magnetopause.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/38823
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	No Reading authors. Back catalogue items Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item