Abstract
A multispecies kinetic model of the thermal plasma in the plasmasphere is coupled to a parameterization of a fluid model of the ionosphere at the ion exobase. The hydrogen ion and helium ion density in the equatorial plane are found to exhibit local-time variations that are sensitive to the details of the exobase conditions, as well as to the details of the diurnal convection. In fact, the density enhancement in the post-midnight sector caused by convection can be overwhelmed if the local-time variation of the exobase is large enough. This result has implications for the interpretation and analysis of sunlight scattered by singly ionized helium ions to be measured by imaging satellites, as well as for the hydrogen ion density inferred from the measured helium ion density.
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