Dayside ionospheric plasma convection, electric fields, and field‐aligned currents derived from the SuperDARN radar observations and predicted by the IZMEM model

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A recent deployment of the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) HF radar network provides excellent opportunities to construct two‐dimensional maps of the ionospheric convection over large areas in both the northern and southern polar regions. The Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowave Propagation electrodynamic model (IZMEM) is a potentially useful tool for predicting, also on a global scale, the ionospheric plasma convection patterns, electric fields, magnetic disturbances, ionospheric and field‐aligned currents. Comparisons of the IZMEM predictions with satellite and incoherent scatter radar data show that the model's performance is reasonably good, but the model needs more extensive and accurate verifications. In this paper, several events under relatively stable IMF conditions (Bz < 0 and Bz > 0) are studied and discussed. The SuperDARN/IZMEM ion drift velocities are found to be in reasonable agreement in both magnitude and direction; the average difference (over the individual SuperDARN convection map) between the predicted magnitude of the ion drift velocity and the measured magnitude is about 50%, while the difference in the direction is typically less than 25°. The IZMEM predictions of the location, direction, and magnitude of field‐aligned currents also agree well with the SuperDARN observations. It is concluded that simultaneous use of SuperDARN data and IZMEM model can improve the specification of the polar ionospheric convection for space weather applications.