Time‐Dependent Inversion of Energetic Electron Precipitation Spectra From Ground‐Based Incoherent Scatter Radar Measurements

Abstract

Energetic Particle Precipitation (EPP) represents one of the major sink (or loss) processes for outer radiation belt electrons (e.g., Crew et al., 2016;Thorne, 2010). Other loss processes include outward radial diffusion to the magnetopause and loss of adiabaticity on stretched magnetic field lines (Crew et al., 2016;Ukhorskiy, 2006), a phenomenon referred to as magnetopause shadowing. For EPP, despite the observed presence of coterminous waves with certain types of precipitation, it is remarkably difficult to verify directly that those waves are in fact responsible for such precipitation (Kaeppler et al., 2020). In this work we focus on EPP and their space and ground detection.Once precipitated, the energy transferred during collisions between precipitating particles and neutral components of the atmosphere can ionize and dissociate the collision components, and can lead to chain reactions that considerably disrupt the chemical properties of the upper atmosphere (e.g.,