Abstract

AbstractA new model of the equatorward boundary of the diffuse aurora has been developed using observations of precipitating particles made by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) from 1987 to 2012 as well as Dynamics Explorer 2 (DE 2), which operated from August 1981 to February 1983. Using a local multilinear regression algorithm, we investigated the use of different combinations of magnetometer indices and solar wind coupling functions with different averaging periods and weights to find the best parameterization for a model of the equatorward boundary of the aurora. We find that weighted averages of the AE index and the solar wind coupling function dΦMP/dt both outperform the often used Kp index. Using conjunction events where two DMSP satellites cross the auroral boundary at nearly the same time, we show that these models are better at extrapolating the auroral boundary to different local times than previous models.

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