D-region impact area of energetic electron precipitation during pulsating aurora

Bland, Emma; Tesema, Fasil; Partamies, Noora

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-39-135-2021

Articles | Volume 39, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-39-135-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Special Issue on the joint 19th International EISCAT Symposium...

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-39-135-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 39, issue 1

Regular paper

|

10 Feb 2021

Regular paper |

| 10 Feb 2021

D-region impact area of energetic electron precipitation during pulsating aurora

Emma Bland, Fasil Tesema, and Noora Partamies

Data sets

Super Dual Auroral Radar Network British Antarctic Survey https://www.bas.ac.uk/project/superdarn

Syowa Color Digital Camera (CDC) National Institute of Polar Research, Japan http://polaris.nipr.ac.jp/~acaurora/syowa_CDC_QL/

GSFC/SPDF OMNIWeb interface NASA https://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov

Model code and software

SuperDARN Radar Software Toolkit (RST) 4.5 SuperDARN Data Analysis Working Group, E. G. Thomas, M. T. Schmidt, E. C. Bland, A. G. Burrell, P. V. Ponomarenko, A. S., Reimer, K. T. Sterne, and M.-T. Walach https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.801458

Short summary

A total of 10 Super Dual Auroral Radar Network radars were used to estimate the horizontal area over which energetic electrons impact the atmosphere at 70–100 km altitude during pulsating aurorae (PsAs). The impact area varies significantly from event to event. Approximately one-third extend over 12° of magnetic latitude, while others are highly localised. Our results could be used to improve the forcing used in atmospheric/climate models to properly capture the energy contribution from PsAs.