The asymmetry towards stronger Birkeland currents in the Northern Hemisphere

Iridium satellites in low-Earth orbit have transformed our knowledge of geospace by enabling the AMPERE dataset. We employ AMPERE data from October 2009 to December 2021 to examine the interhemispheric asymmetry in Birkeland currents over the span of a solar cycle. We take daily averages of the upward and downward current in both hemispheres and examine the systematic asymmetry by removing the seasonal trend. We find that Birkeland currents are stronger in the Northern Hemisphere than in the South after removing the seasonal trend, consistent with Coxon et al. (2016). We explore how this asymmetry manifests over a solar cycle and compare the variation of the asymmetry to other parameters.