HR: 0830h
AN: SM11C-1171    [PDF]
TI: Global Images of a Traveling Convection Vortex Event
AU: * Murr, D L
EM: david.murr@dartmouth.edu
AF: Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755 United States
AU: Frey, H U
AF: Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94704 United States
AU: Semeter, J
AF: SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025 United States
AB: The large-scale properties of Traveling Convection Vortex (TCV) events in the dayside high-latitude ionosphere have typically been characterized by arrays of ground-based magnetometers. One of these properties is the amplitude of the magnetic perturbation, which peaks two or three hours pre- or post-noon as the events propagate from local noon toward the dawn or dusk flank. Ideally, this amplitude peak in the observed magnetic perturbation could be related to the strength of the field-aligned current associated with the TCV. However, precipitation associated with the event may enhance the local ionospheric conductivity which would also contribute to an enhancement in the observed magnetic perturbation. In this study we use global images from the IMAGE satellite for one TCV event to remove this ambiguity and definitively show the amplitude profile of the TCV field-aligned current as it forms near local noon and propagates dawnward. These space-based images, with global extent but limited spatial resolution, are augmented with ground-based, higher spatial resolution, all-sky images.
DE: 2400 IONOSPHERE
DE: 2407 Auroral ionosphere (2704)
DE: 2431 Ionosphere/magnetosphere interactions (2736)
DE: 2463 Plasma convection
SC: SPA - Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting