Open AccessDirect experimental test of Joule heating damping of a Pc5 pulsation using the Scandinavian Twin Auroral Radar Experiment (STARE) radar system
Author(s) -
Nielsen E.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.67
H-Index - 298
eISSN - 2156-2202
pISSN - 0148-0227
DOI - 10.1029/2001ja900005
Subject(s) - ionosphere , radar , attenuation , geophysics , joule heating , shock (circulatory) , physics , interplanetary spaceflight , atmospheric sciences , computational physics , geology , meteorology , plasma , solar wind , optics , medicine , telecommunications , quantum mechanics , computer science
An interplanetary shock interacted with the Earth on February 18, 1999, and excited an intense transient Pc5 pulsation. Analysis of the spatial variations and of the time variations of the electron drifts induced by the pulsation in the high‐latitude ionosphere allows a deduction of the latitudinal variation of the height‐integrated Pedersen conductivity. It is concluded that ionospheric Joule heating losses are sufficient to account for the attenuation of the pulsation. It is also shown that for a pulsation event of this type use of magnetometer observations lead to an overestimate of the attenuation, or, equivalently, to an underestimate of the ionospheric Pedersen conductivity.