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Surveying Pulsating Auroras Ann. Geophys., 38, 1–8, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-38-1-2020 © Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Surveying pulsating auroras Eric Grono and Eric Donovan Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada Correspondence: Eric Grono ([email protected]) Received: 28 August 2019 – Discussion started: 6 September 2019 Accepted: 26 November 2019 – Published: 2 January 2020 Abstract. The early-morning auroral oval is dominated by More recently, auroral types have been considered with pulsating auroras. These auroras have often been discussed regard to the physical drivers of these processes, and great as if they are one phenomenon, but they are not. Pulsating headway has been made differentiating them based on the auroras are separable based on the extent of their pulsation mechanism responsible for their particle precipitation. In the and structuring into at least three subcategories. This study broadest sense, there are two types of mechanism corre- surveyed 10 years of all-sky camera data to determine the sponding to two overarching auroral classifications. In some occurrence probability for each type of pulsating aurora in auroras, electric fields parallel to the magnetic field – so- magnetic local time and magnetic latitude. Amorphous pul- called parallel electric fields – increase particles’ kinetic en- sating aurora (APAs) are a pervasive, nearly daily feature in ergy parallel to the magnetic field, shifting their pitch angle the early-morning auroral oval which have an 86 % chance into the loss cone. Such auroras are classified as discrete, an of occurrence at their peak. Patchy pulsating auroras (PPAs) example of which is the auroral arc. In other auroras, stochas- and patchy auroras (PAs) are less common, peaking at 21 % tic interactions with plasma waves or magnetic field curva- and 29 %, respectively. Before local midnight, pulsating au- ture scatter particles’ pitch angles into the loss cone. In these roras are almost exclusively APAs. Occurrence distributions cases, the aurora is classified as diffuse. of APAs, PPAs, and PAs are mapped into the equatorial plane Pulsating auroras are a type of diffuse aurora character- to approximately locate their source regions. The PA and ized by quasi-periodic pulsations and precipitating electron PPA distributions primarily map to locations approximately energies between a few kiloelectron volts and hundreds of between 4 and 9 RE, while some APAs map to farther dis- kiloelectron volts (Johnstone, 1978). They generally have an tances, suggesting that the mechanism which structures PPAs irregular, patchy structure (Royrvik and Davis, 1977) which and PAs is constrained to the inner magnetosphere. This is in constantly evolves in time (Shiokawa et al., 2010). The spa- agreement with Grono and Donovan(2019), which located tial size of pulsating auroral structures has been measured to these auroras relative to the proton aurora. range from one to hundreds of kilometres across (Royrvik and Davis, 1977). Measurements of pulsating aurora altitude thicknesses are scarce, but Jones et al.(2009) measured a pul- sating auroral patch and found it to be between 15 and 25 km 1 Introduction thick. Pulsating aurora events occur most often in the morn- If one looks at the aurora for just a few hours, it is obvious ing sector, when they persist for an average of 1.5 h (Jones that there are different types. If one looks at enough auroras, et al., 2011; Partamies et al., 2017), but events lasting up- it becomes apparent that a relatively small number of specific wards of 15 h have been observed (Jones et al., 2013). It is auroral types dominate the overall phenomenon. Historically, unknown exactly how long pulsating aurora events can per- early auroral researchers classified auroras based on their ap- sist for. Measurements of pulsating aurora event durations pearance. This morphological classification lacks any con- are conservative because ground-based cameras, our primary nection to the magnetospheric or magnetosphere–ionosphere tool for optically observing the aurora, cannot operate past coupling mechanisms that might cause a specific type of au- sunrise (Partamies et al., 2017). The lifetimes of individual rora. Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 2 E. Grono and E. Donovan: Surveying pulsating aurora structures are known to range from a few seconds to tens of proton aurora luminosity originates from and the magnetic minutes (e.g., Grono et al., 2017; Grono and Donovan, 2018). field is stretched. Pulsating auroral features exhibit diverse characteristics, The aurora is a powerful tool for remote sensing the large- varying in terms of shape, size, brightness, altitude, spatial scale dynamics of the magnetosphere. Pulsating auroras are stability, modulation, lifespan, and velocity, yet little effort a widespread type of aurora, the subcategories of which we has been spent on differentiating them. Historically, pulsating do not yet understand. This gap in our collective knowledge auroras were subcategorized by Royrvik and Davis(1977) limits the information about the state of magnetosphere that into patches, arcs, and arc segments, but modern literature can be inferred from pulsating aurora. While surveys of pul- generally only refers to “pulsating aurora” and “pulsating au- sating aurora have been done previously (Jones et al., 2011; roral patches” (e.g., Yang et al., 2019; Partamies et al., 2019; Partamies et al., 2017), they have not distinguished between Ozaki et al., 2019) and would not consider the “streaming different types. This study presents the first separate surveys arc” of Royrvik and Davis(1977) to be a type of pulsating au- of occurrence probabilities for APAs, PPAs, and PAs. rora. Grono and Donovan(2018) recently used all-sky cam- era data to define criteria for differentiating pulsating aurora based on their phenomenology. They identified three types of pulsating aurora which were separable based on their pul- 2 Data and methodology sation and structure. Amorphous pulsating auroras (APAs) evolve so rapidly in both shape and brightness that it is usu- To survey pulsating aurora occurrence, the Time History ally difficult – and often impossible – to uniquely identify of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms structures between successive images at a 3 s cadence. Patchy (THEMIS) all-sky imager (ASI) array was used. This net- pulsating auroras (PPAs) consist of highly structured patches work of imagers (Donovan et al., 2006; Mende et al., 2008) which can persist for tens of minutes and pulsate over much is the ground-based component of the NASA mission (An- of their area. Patchy aurora (PA) structures are similar to gelopoulos, 2008) designed to study the aurora and sub- those of PPAs but do not oscillate in brightness. While it may storms using conjoined ground-based and space-borne ob- be oxymoronic to describe a non-pulsating feature as pulsat- servations. The ASIs capture panchromatic, or “white light”, ing aurora, PAs and PPAs are clearly closely related in terms images of the aurora at a 3 s cadence on a 256 × 256 pixel of the underlying scattering mechanism responsible for the charge-coupled device (CCD) and have been operating for precipitation. Based on their appearance in the ionosphere, over 10 years, amassing tens of millions of images. It can these two auroras seem to be differentiated only by the ex- be surmised from Jones et al.(2011) that pulsating auroras istence of a modulating mechanism in the magnetospheric are visible within about 10 % of these images (Grono et al., source region. Herein we use the term “pulsating aurora” to 2017). Of the 21 imagers deployed across North America, collectively refer to APAs, PPAs, and PAs, and the acronyms those stationed at Rankin Inlet, Nunavut (RANK); Gillam, will be used to identify them individually. Manitoba (GILL); and Pinawa, Manitoba (PINA) were uti- Pulsating auroras have been shown to be pervasive in the lized for this study. The locations and fields of view of these morning sector (Jones et al., 2011; Partamies et al., 2017), but imagers are shown in Fig.1. The fields of view are drawn we believe those studies conflated at least APAs and PPAs, at 10◦ of elevation relative to the imager at an altitude of while possibly ignoring PAs altogether due to their relative 110 km. lack of pulsation (Grono and Donovan, 2018). Nishimura Data from these ASIs were viewed as keogram-style im- et al.(2010, 2011) connected specific examples of APAs and ages (Eather et al., 1976) illustrating the evolution of aurora PPAs, without differentiating them, with specific chorus el- in time and one spatial dimension, which in this case was ements in the equatorial magnetosphere. Yang et al.(2015, aligned to the Gillam magnetic meridian at −26:1089◦ mag- 2017) related the individual motion of PPA and PA patches netic longitude (MLON). These keograms, an example of to convection in the ionosphere, and their source regions to which is shown in Fig.2, were arranged and aligned in a convection in the magnetosphere. Yang et al.(2019) observed stack to give a wide view of the aurora along this meridian one event where an APA feature was associated with higher- so that the upper and lower magnetic latitude boundaries of energy electron precipitation than a PPA patch. By locating pulsating auroral events could be identified. The location of the latitude boundaries of pulsating auroras relative to the this meridian relative to the fields of view of the ASIs can be proton aurora, Grono and Donovan(2019) discovered that seen in Fig.1. they occur either within or equatorward of the proton aurora. Across 2006 through 2016, 280 d were identified where PPAs and PAs were observed to occur predominantly equa- visibility was simultaneously clear at all three sites. torward of the optical b2i (Donovan et al., 2003), which is the Keograms were created for each day of data to search for ionospheric counterpart to the isotropy boundary for plasma pulsating aurora.
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