Dartmouth Events

Abstract: Understanding the effects of energetic particle precipitation into Earth’s atmosphere, by precipitation such as the subsecond and intense increase of microburst electrons, is necessary to understand the coupled solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere system. Two precipitation phenomena: the aurora and relativistic (> 1 MeV) electron microbursts, are often studied independently. However, recent studies hypothesize that keV to 10s keV auroral producing electrons can be accompanied by relativistic electrons. I will present the results of two case studies: one that shows a strong correlation between relativistic microbursts and patchy aurora, a type of pulsating aurora, and another that shows a significant spatial correlation between proton aurora and microbursts. Importantly, the implication of these results is that the keV auroral electron precipitation is at times intrinsically linked to MeV electron precipitation---typically associated with the outer Van Allen radiation belt.