Magnetic local time (MLT) dependence of auroral peak emission height and morphology

Partamies, Noora; Whiter, Daniel; Kauristie, Kirsti; Massetti, Stefano

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-40-605-2022

Articles | Volume 40, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-40-605-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-40-605-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 40, issue 5

Regular paper

|

12 Oct 2022

Regular paper |

| 12 Oct 2022

Magnetic local time (MLT) dependence of auroral peak emission height and morphology

Noora Partamies, Daniel Whiter, Kirsti Kauristie, and Stefano Massetti

Data sets

World Data Center for Geomagnetism Kyoto University https://wdc.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/wdc/Sec3.html

OMNIWed, Solar wind magnetic field and plasma data NASA https://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/ow_min.html

Short summary

We investigate the local time behaviour of auroral structures and emission height. Data are collected from the Fennoscandian Lapland and Svalbard latitutes from 7 identical auroral all-sky cameras over about 1 solar cycle. The typical peak emission height of the green aurora varies from 110 km on the nightside to about 118 km in the morning over Lapland but stays systematically higher over Svalbard. During fast solar wind, nightside emission heights are 5 km lower than during slow solar wind.