Large Scale High-Latitude Ionospheric Electrodynamic Fields and Currents

Abstract

This paper provides an overview as well as the application of the Assimilative Mapping of Ionospheric Electrodynamics (AMIE) procedure. AMIE synthesizes observations from various ground-based and space-born instruments to derive global patterns of ionospheric conductance, electric fields, ionospheric equivalent current, horizontal currents, field-aligned currents, and other related electrodynamic fields simultaneously. Examples are presented to illustrate the effects of the different data inputs on the AMIE outputs. The AMIE patterns derived from ground magnetometer data are generally similar to those derived from satellite magnetometer data. But ground magnetometer data yield a cross-polar potential drop that is about 15–45 % smaller than that derived from satellite magnetometer data. Ground magnetometers also grossly underestimate the magnetic perturbations in space when compared with the in situ satellite magnetometer data. However, when satellite magnetometer data are employed, AMIE is able to replicate the observed magnetic perturbations along the satellite tracks with a mean root-mean-square (RMS) error of 17–21 %. In addition to derive snapshots of ionospheric electrodynamic fields, the utility of AMIE can be easily expanded to obtain the average distributions of these fields along with their associated variability. Such information should be valuable to the analysis and interpretation of the Swarm observations.