Open AccessAssimilation of GNSS Measurements for Estimation of High‐Latitude Convection Processes
Author(s) -
Miladinovich Daniel S.,
DattaBarua Seebany,
López Rubio Aurora,
Zhang ShunRong,
Bust Gary S.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
space weather
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.254
H-Index - 56
ISSN - 1542-7390
DOI - 10.1029/2019sw002409
Subject(s) - millstone hill , incoherent scatter , geophysics , plasmasphere , electric field , f region , ionosphere , atmospheric sciences , computational physics , earth's magnetic field , convection , dipole model of the earth's magnetic field , gnss applications , physics , solar wind , meteorology , plasma , magnetic field , satellite , magnetosphere , interplanetary magnetic field , quantum mechanics , astronomy
Geomagnetic storms produce significant electrodynamics at midlatitudes. Strong ion convection can affect thermospheric neutral wind motion. The converse is also true, such that both fields and winds can drive ionospheric plasma movement. This work adjusts a background modeled high‐latitude electrostatic potential to estimate the storm time electric field based on data‐derived plasma densities and measurements of neutral wind. Electron densities are derived from global navigation satellite system (GNSS) total electron content measurements using Ionospheric Data Assimilation Four‐Dimensional (IDA4D). These are input to Estimating Model Parameters from Ionospheric Reverse Engineering (EMPIRE) to estimate electric potential corrections to the background Weimer 2000 potential model. The EMPIRE basis functions for electric potential are spherical harmonics in dipole magnetic colatitude and longitude, enforced to be constant along a magnetic field line. For the 17 March 2015 storm, EMPIRE electric potential produces westward zonal ion drifts that more closely agree with incoherent scatter radar (ISR) measurements made at Millstone Hill than the background Weimer 2000 model alone, when electric potential and meridional neutral winds are both corrected. Additionally ingesting northward line‐of‐sight neutral wind measurements from a Fabry‐Perot interferometer at Millstone Hill makes little difference in the agreement between zonal ion drift predictions and measurements. Estimation of only electric potential reduces the agreement between the assimilated prediction of the field‐perpendicular zonal drifts and ISR measurements significantly.