SA037-07
Direct evidence of ionospheric variability driven by the neutral wind dynamo

Wednesday, 16 December 2020: 08:54
Virtual
Brian Joseph Harding1, Thomas J Immel2, Scott England3, Roderick A Heelis4, Jeffrey M M Forbes5, Astrid I Maute6, Stephen B Mende7, Christoph R Englert8, John Harlander9, Kenneth David Marr8, Russell Stoneback10, Jonathan J Makela11 and ICON Team, (1)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (2)Univ of California, Berkeley, CA, United States, (3)Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Virginia, VA, United States, (4)University Texas Dallas, Richardson, TX, United States, (5)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (6)NCAR/HAO, Boulder, CO, United States, (7)Univ California, Berkeley, CA, United States, (8)Naval Research Lab DC, Space Science Division, Washington, DC, United States, (9)SCSU, St Cloud, MN, United States, (10)University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, United States, (11)Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
We present results from the first year of NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission to study the sources of ionospheric variability. ICON is the first mission to make simultaneous, coincident measurements of ion drifts and the neutral winds that drive them. Once per orbit, the ion drift velocity is measured at ~600 km altitude within a few minutes of remote observations of neutral wind profiles along the same magnetic field line (90 - 300 km altitude). About 100 times per year, a "conjugate" maneuver is performed, observing the wind profiles at both the northern and southern magnetic footpoints. These measurements provide an unprecedented opportunity to study the neutral-wind-driven dynamo. In this work we describe the day-to-day and longitudinal variations of the vertical plasma drift and quantify their relationship to the neutral wind drivers.
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