Measurements of thermospheric response to auroral activities

The Joule heating produced by auroral electrojets and its thermospheric response can be studied by monitoring the thermospheric temperatures by means of optical methods; simultaneously investigating the concurrent auroral electrojet activities using geomagnetic records obtained from stations along a meridian close to the observation site of optical measurements. We report, in this paper, the measurements of thermospheric response to auroral activities which were made at Albany (42.68°N, 73.82°W), New York on 2 September 1978 (U.T.) when an isolated substorm occurred. The thermospheric temperatures were measured by using a high-resolution Fabry-Perot interferometer that determines the line profiles of the [OI] 6300 Å line emission. The intensities and latitudinal positions of auroral electrojets were obtained by the analysis of magnetograms from the IMS Fort Churchill meridian chain stations.