HR: 1340h
AN: SM13B-1323    [Abstracts]
TI: Reverse Convection Potential Behavior During Northward IMF
AU: * Wilder, F D
EM: fwilder@vt.edu
AF: Virginia Tech Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 302 Whittemore Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24060, United States
AU: Clauer, C R
EM: rclauer@vt.edu
AF: Virginia Tech Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 302 Whittemore Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24060, United States
AU: Baker, J
EM: Joseph.Baker@jhuapl.edu
AF: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, 11100 Johns Hopkins Rd, Laurel, MD 20723, United States
AB: We report the results of an investigation of the reverse convection potentials in the ionosphere during periods of steady northward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). While it has been shown that the polar cap potential in the ionosphere exhibits non-linear saturation behavior when the IMF is southward, it has yet to be shown whether the high latitude reverse convection cells in response to northward IMF exhibit similar behavior. We use solar wind data from the ACE satellite from 1998 to 2005 to search for events in the solar wind when the IMF is northward and the interplanetary electric field is stable within a given bin for more than 40 minutes. We then use bin- averaged SuperDARN convection data and apply a spherical harmonic fit to calculate the average potential pattern for each bin. Preliminary results suggest that the reverse convection cells do, in fact, exhibit non-linear saturation behavior.
DE: 2411 Electric fields (2712)
DE: 2431 Ionosphere/magnetosphere interactions (2736)
DE: 2463 Plasma convection (2760)
DE: 2475 Polar cap ionosphere
DE: 2784 Solar wind/magnetosphere interactions
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting