Using the Motion of Patchy Pulsating Aurora to Remote Sense Magnetospheric Convection
Abstract
Magnetospheric convection is the main process of transport, energization and injection of energetic particles into the magnetosphere, and plays an important role in all dynamics in the Earth’s magnetosphere. It can be directly measured through in-situ ion/electron drift measurements or electric field measurements from satellites in the magnetosphere, and can also be remotely sensed by the in-situ ion drift velocity from satellites in the top ionosphere and ground-based radar measurements. Satellites either in the top ionosphere or magnetosphere can give accurate measurements of convection, but there is always the problem of separating spatial from temporal variation. Ground-based radar measurements either are often absent from the region of interests or have small field of view. In this thesis, I will develop a new technique – the motion of patchy pulsating aurora (PPA) – to remotely sense the magnetospheric convection. In a series of three papers, I will present a detailed demonstration of the equivalence of patch velocities and E × B convection, a statistical study of the motion of PPA and a case in which we use the motion of PPA to investigate the magnetospheric convection. These studies are great evidence showing that patch motion is a proxy for convection and an interesting complement to other convection measurements.
Description
Keywords
Atmospheric Science
Citation
Yang, B. (2017). Using the Motion of Patchy Pulsating Aurora to Remote Sense Magnetospheric Convection (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28621