A Source or a Sink? How Trends in Particle Precipitation Dictate Electrodynamics in High-Latitude Ionosphere

Fast, charged particles intermittently rain down into Earth's dense atmosphere. The kinetic energy of these particles are converted into heat and light, and it ionizes the atmospheric gas, providing a source of both free and bound energy for the ionosphere; this is the aurora borealis and australis. The specific kinetic energy of the constituent particles in the aurora dictates the atmospheric response to the ongoing particle precipitation, with hard (high-energy) particles penetrating deeper than those that are considered soft (possessing a low kinetic energy). In this paper, we analyze a large database of precipitating particle observations from the United States' Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, and aggregate the altitude-dependent response of the ionosphere at high-latitudes, using fast ionization rate parameterizations due to two important papers by Fang et al. (10.1029/2010GL045406 and 10.1002/jgra.50484). We explore a characteristic altitude-dependent pattern in space (magnetic latitude and longitude), and time (geomagnetic activity), pertaining to the shape of the northern hemisphere, high-latitude ionosphere during local winter. We briefly discuss the implied ratio of E- to F-region Pedersen conductance, and this ratio's ramifications for the growth & decay (and thus proliferation) of plasma turbulence in the high-latitude ionosphere.