Microburst precipitation observed during the BARREL balloon campaigns

Abstract:

During the BARREL (Balloon Array for Radiation belt Relativistic Electron Losses) campaign in 2013/2014, several episodes of microburst (10 - 100s keV with time scales of 100s ms) precipitation were observed. A few of these events were observed by multiple balloons. In this study we will discuss the context of these events in terms of geomagnetic indice AE, location relative to the plasmapause as well as their L and MLT. We will also compare the temporal structure of microburst episodes between events and between payloads at different geographic locations, specifically with respect to the region of the south atlantic anomaly. This will allow us to consider the effect of temporal dispersion due to particle drift for particles near but outside of the bounce loss cone and within the drift loss cone. We will investigate whether the common, soft, apparently non-bursty precipitation events observed by balloons might be drifted microburst precipitation, and therefore also generated by the same source as the very structured microbursts.