GLOBAL DISTRIBUTIONS OF IONOSPHERIC ELECTRIC POTENTIALS FOR VARIABLE IMF CONDITIONS: CLIMATOLOGY AND NEAR-REAL TIME SPECIFICATION

摘要

We report on a study of global climatology in the ionospheric electric potentials obtained from combining two algorithms used for mapping of high- and middle/low latitude ionospheric electrodynamics: the LiMIE (http://www.sprl.umich.edu/mist/limie.html) and IMEH (http://geospace.nat.bg) models, respectively. In this combination, the latter model utilizes high-latitude field-aligned current distributions pro-vided by LiMIE for various interplanetary magnetic field conditions and different seasons (summer, winter, equinox). For the testing purposes, we developed a Web-based interface which provides global distributions of the ionopsheric electric potential in near-real time utilizing solar wind observations made onboard the NASA's ACE spacecraft upstream at L1. We discuss the electric potential global modeling over both the northern and southern hemispheres and consider some implications for the solar cycle studies and space weather forecasting.