Abstract
The excess thermospheric density at low latitudes during the recovery phase of geomagnetic disturbances found in earlier studies has been related to the ring current belt. This would mean that the geomagnetic effect is due not only to an auroral but also to an equatorial source. The low latitude excess density could be separated into a storm time dependent and a local time dependent component. Thus, the morphology of this effect is similar to that of the geomagnetic disturbance field. The heating can be attributed mainly to the precipitation of energetic neutral particles produced by charge exchange, as well as to the dumping of energetic charged particles due to wave-particle interaction. The local time dependent component could be connected also with the asymmetry of the composition of the ring current and with the irregular shape of the plasmasphere.
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