Data from: Anomalous Electron Temperature

Creators

Bela G. Fejer, Utah State UniversityFollow

Description

Anomalous Electron Temperatures in the evening equatorial ionosphere. These are outputs of simulations from the semi-empirical SAMI2-PE (Varney et al. 2012) for the night of the 02 and 05 August 2011.

Author ORCID Identifier

Bela G. Fejer https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9411-0152

OCLC

1236212454

Document Type

Dataset

DCMI Type

Dataset

File Format

.txt

Publication Date

12-9-2020

Funder

NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Publisher

Utah State University

Award Number

NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration 80NSSC17K071

Methodology

We use novel radar observations at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory to study the first observations of highly enhanced plasma temperatures in the evening equatorial ionosphere. These short-lived solstice evening events occurred following large upward plasma drifts and sharply reduced plasma densities. The electron temperatures increase during the 5-6 August 2011 moderate solar event reached peak values of about 1000 K near 350 km. Smaller electron temperature increases were observed to altitudes up to about 500 km. There were also smaller concurrent ion temperature enhancements. During the very low solar flux 20-21 January 2020 event, a peak electron temperature increase of about 700K occurred at an altitude of about 270 km. We also show that SAMI2-PE simulations using the measured vertical plasma drifts reproduce the main characteristics of the measured plasma densities and temperatures up to 300 km, but not at higher altitudes. These simulations indicate that the evening anomalous plasma heating below about 300 km is due to the decrease in the electron-ion cooling rate resulting from upward plasma drift driven decrease in the plasma density. Plasma transport and reduced cooling rate is a potential source of higher altitude heating.

Related Content

Varney, R. H., Swartz, W. E., Hysell, D. L., & Huba, J. D. (2012). SAMI2-PE: A model of the ionosphere including multistream interhemispheric photoelectron transport: SAMI2-PE. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 117(A6), n/a-n/a. https://doi.org/10.1029/2011JA017280

Referenced by

Fejer, B. G., Hysell, D. L., & Navarro, L. A. (2021). Anomalous Electron Temperature Increases in the Evening Equatorial Ionosphere. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 126(2). https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JA028728

Start Date

8-2-2011

End Date

8-5-2011

Location

Jicamarca Radio Observatory

Language

eng

Code Lists

See the README.txt file.

Comments

4 ASCII files named:

rate_02082011.txt: contains SAMI2-PE outputs of altitude versus Heating/Cooling rates for the 02 Aug 2011 at 18:05.

rate_05082011.txt: contains SAMI2-PE outputs of altitude versus Heating/Cooling rates for the 05 Aug 2011 at 18:05.

Ti.txt: contains SAMI2-PE outputs of altitude versus ion temperature at 18:05 LT for the 02 and 05 Aug 2011

Te.txt: contains SAMI2-PE outputs of altitude versus electron temperature at 18:05 LT for the 02 and 05 Aug 2011

Also:

Te_2D.txt: contains SAMI2-PE outputs of altitude versus electron temperature for the 02 and 05 Aug 2011 from 12 to 22 LT

Disciplines

Physics

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.26078/ZERJ-B751

Recommended Citation

Fejar, B. G. (2020). Data from: Anomalous Electron Temperature. Utah State University. https://doi.org/10.26078/ZERJ-B751

Checksum

a99b89ca970bedca78ba1780904de5b4