Precipitating electron energy flux and auroral zone conductances‐An empirical model

Abstract

Data from the low energy electron (LEE) experiments on the Atmosphere Explorer C and D satellites have been used to determine the average global distribution of the energy flux of precipitating auroral electrons and their average energy for different levels of geomagnetic activity. Measurements from the Atmosphere Explorer unified abstract file (15‐s resolution) have been binned according to invariant latitude (in the range 50°–90°), magnetic local time, and geomagnetic activity as measured by the Kp and auroral electrojet (AE) indices, separately. Bin‐averaged values of precipitating energy flux and average energy have been calculated, and a smoothing algorithm used to reduce stochastic variations in the raw data. The results indicate that, for the parameters studied, the AE index does a superior job of ordering the data with regard to geomagnetic activity. The global distribution of the auroral enhancement portion of the Pedersen and Hall conductances were inferred from the data by means of an empirical fit to detailed energy deposition calculations.