Observations of thermospheric vector wind over Yellow River Station during auroral substorm events

Abstract

Strong disturbances associated with auroral substorms originate from the ionosphere–magnetosphere owing to the effects of the solar wind, and the wind field in the ionosphere is related to such substorm activity. Here, we describe the analysis of four auroral substorm events, for which we employed an all-sky Fabry–Perot interferometer to observe the two-dimensional horizontal wind field and combined the results with data from an all-sky charge-coupled device imager, a fluxgate magnetometer installed at Yellow River Station, and the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network. The results demonstrate that, during auroral substorms, the vector wind field is related closely to variations in the ion drift and geomagnetic field. Moreover, we observed a changing wind field of approximately 300 m/s in response to variations in the electric and magnetic fields (likely caused by ion drag) and a disturbance of about 200 m/s that we attribute to the interaction of Joule heating and ion drag.