Abstract
The magnetosphere exerts a strong influence on the ionosphere-thermosphere system via electric fields, particle precipitation, field-aligned currents, and heat flows. These magnetospheric processes act to produce a number of interesting ionospheric features, including electron and ion temperature hot spots, large-scale plasma blobs, extended tongues of ionization, ionization troughs and peaks, and ion composition changes. Superimposed on the large-scale ionospheric features are localized small-scale features, with perturbation amplitudes ranging from 10 per cent to a factor of 100. These ionospheric features then affect the thermospheric structure, circulation, and composition owing to ion-neutral momentum and energy coupling, and these changes, in turn, affect the ionosphere. Because of the strong ionosphere-thermosphere coupling, the presence of small-scale ionospheric features, and the different ionospheric and thermospheric response time-scales, localized thermospheric features are also produced, particularly at E-region altitudes where viscous dissipation is negligible.
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