Assimilative Mapping of Interhemispheric Polar Ionospheric Electrodynamics

Abstract:

The Earth’s main magnetic field is asymmetric between hemispheres due to its non-dipolar component, leading to various hemispherical differences in the coupling among the solar wind, magnetosphere and ionosphere. Manifestation of the asymmetric coupling through different electrodynamic parameters reported in past studies is considerably diverse. To fill the gap in our current understanding, obtained so far by analyzing individual parameters separately and comparing statistical behaviors of the parameters, we quantify the degree of instantaneous inter-hemispheric imbalance of electromagnetic energy deposition (Poynting flux), field-aligned currents, and convection electric fields though global and self-consistent analysis of electrodynamic variables at both polar regions, by means of data assimilation. Inter-hemispheric assimilative maps of different high-latitude electrodynamical parameters are obtained from simultaneous analysis of multiple types of space-based and ground-based observations made available though the AMPERE, SuperDARN, SuperMAG and DMSP programs with rigorous consideration of the uncertainty associated with each observation.