Abstract
It is now well known that in the topside ionosphere thermal conduction from the protonosphere becomes the dominant factor over the heating and loss terms in shaping the ionospheric electron temperature ( T e) profile. By analyzing a limited database of incoherent scatter (IS) T e measurements, Mahajan and Pandey [J. Geophys. Res. 85 (1980) 213] reported a correlation between the electron heat flux and electron density in the topside ionosphere. Since attention has been steadily mounting for the empirical modeling of T e, we now exploit the large database of IS measurements of T e and N e at Arecibo during 1989–1990 (high solar activity), as well as during 1975–1976 (low solar activity) for this purpose. We again find a functional relationship between heat flux and electron density in the topside ionosphere during both the solar activities. These functional relationships are used to generate topside T e profiles.
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