Hemispheric Asymmetry of Ionospheric Convection and Joule Heating and Its Impact on the Thermospher

Abstract:

The Assimilative Mapping of Ionospheric Electrodynamics (AMIE) procedure has proved to be a very useful tool to estimate the large-scale simultaneous distributions of ionospheric conductance, electric potential, and other related quantities by combining simultaneous measurements from satellites, radars, and ground magnetometers. In this paper we apply the AMIE procedure to compare the high-latitude ionospheric convection and Joule heating patterns between the northern and southern hemispheres and to investigate how the hemispheric asymmetry varies with different solar wind and IMF conditions. We also investigate the impact of the asymmetric high-latitude magnetospheric forcing on themospheric dynamics based on the coupled AMIE-TIMEGCM simulations as well as through intercomparison with observations.