Title: NOAA Electron Climatology: A Space Weather Model of Electron Precipitation
Author: R. A. Frahm
Affil: Southwest Research Institute
Email: rudy@espsun.space.swri.edu
Authors: M. Wuest, J. K. Jennings, J. R. Sharber, and J. D. Winningham
Affils: Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX 78238
Abstract: The Sun is a source of the plasma which bombards the Earth's magnetosphere. Some of this plasma enters the Earth's environment, eventually reaching low altitudes in the polar regions, where it causes enhanced ionospheric currents, auroral displays, atmospheric heating, and changes in atmospheric chemistry. In this paper we report on the development of a particle climatology to model the particle energy incident on the auroral upper atmosphere. The climatology is built using particle data from the NOAA low altitude satellites. We describe the spectral shape of downflowing electrons measured by NOAA-12 spacecraft at low-altitudes for varying space weather conditions. For each hour of UT, the electron spectral shape is defined for solar activity (using F10.7), geomagnetic activity (using Dst, Kp, and PC), invariant latitude (40 deg to 90 deg N and -40 deg to -90 deg S), and every hour of magnetic local time.
Since the NOAA data has coarse energy resolution, we discuss the spectral reconstruction technique used to obtain a spectrum from NOAA data. The climatology model is separate for each NOAA spacecraft; however, plans are formulated to include data from other NOAA spacecraft. These are discussed.
The resulting NOAA climatology will provide input of the averaged measured electron precipitation to atmospheric models. Thus, we contribute to space weather research by providing electron precipitation into the atmosphere as a function of solar activity, geomagnetic activity, and location.