Ion frictional heating at high latitudes and its possible use for an in situ determination of neutral thermospheric winds and temperatures

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Abstract
We have used the Atmosphere Explorer C data base of ion temperature and ion drift velocities to study the long recognized principle that large scale convection electric fields are responsible for substantial enhancements in the ion temperature at high latitudes. As had been indicated by various authors previously, our study shows that there is a clear relationship between large ion velocities and ion temperature enhancements. Furthermore, with the help of a more quantitative study, we find that, since ion heating is sensitive to the relative motion between the ion and neutral gases we can use the ion temperature and drift measurements to extract neutral wind and neutral temperature information along the satellite track. From a study of several examples we conclude that the present approach can be used with varying degrees of accuracy for the diagnostic of thermospheric dynamical properties above 300 km when those properties are not measured directly. When neutral dynamical properties are measured our approach could be used for a detailed study of the ion energy balance at high latitudes.