Self-consistent modeling of electron precipitation and responses in the ionosphere: Application to low-altitude energization during substorms

Specifically, the ring current model RAM-SCBE is two-way coupled to an ionospheric electron transport model GLOW (GLobal airglOW), representing a significant improvement over previous models, in which the ionosphere is either treated as a 2-D spherical boundary of the magnetosphere or is driven by empirical precipitation models that are incapable of capturing small-scale, transient variations.

The new model enables us to study the impact of substorm-associated, spectrum-resolved electron precipitation on the 3-D ionosphere. We found that after each substorm injection, a high-energy tail of precipitation is produced in the dawn sector outside the plasmapause, by energetic electrons (10 < E < 100 keV) scattered by whistler-mode chorus waves. Consequently, an ionospheric sublayer characterized by enhanced Pedersen conductivity arises at unusually low altitude (similar to 85 km), with its latitudinal width of similar to 5-10 degrees in the auroral zone.