A comparison of polar cap ionospheric velocity determined from a digital ionosonde model and the DICM and IZMEM/DMSP electric potential models

Abstract

Digisonde Portable Sounder 4 (DPS-4) ionospheric F-region drift measurements at the polar cap station Casey (110.5°E, 66.3°S geographic, 80.8°S corrected geomagnetic), Antarctica were used to derive the Casey 1997 (C97) regression model of Smith [Ionospheric F-region plasma convection at Casey – a southern polar cap station. PhD Thesis. La Trobe University, Australia, 1998]. F-region ionospheric convection velocities derived from C97 are compared with convection velocities derived from the application of E × B /B 2 at the geomagnetic latitude of Casey to the relatively new DICM and IZMEM/DMSP fully parameterized electric potential convection models of Papitashvili and Rich [J. Geophys. Res. 107 (A8) 1198, 2002]. Where the DICM model was constructed from satellite F-region ion drift observations from DMSP satellite data at 840 km, and the IZMEM/DMSP model was constructed using ground-magnetometer measurements and calibrated against DMSP ion data. A comparison between C97 and the new DICM and IZMEM/DMSP models was undertaken as a function of dipole tilt angle or season and for a range of IMF parameters. The initial results of the comparison between these experimental models for estimating F-region ionospheric convection drift velocities will be presented.