A Comparison of Conjugate Auroral Electojet Indices

极光电喷流指数（AE）是高纬度地磁活动的一个指标，代表了北极电离层极光电喷流的强度。南半球的类似声发射指数是无法获得的，因为连续磁强计观测缺乏对南部极光带（其中一半延伸到海洋上）的完全覆盖。虽然一般预计全球极光现象是共轭的，但在地面和地球卫星的共轭观测中已观察到差异。这些差异表明需要一个等效的南方极光地磁活动指数。该合同的目标是创建能够准确反映该半球极光活动的南方AE （SAE）指数。有了这个指数，就有可能研究SAE与北半球“标准”AE指数之间的相似性和差异原因。它还可以识别SAE何时不能提供南半球活动的可靠计算，并确定在分析来自南北两极地区的地球空间数据时，除了标准声发射外，何时考虑SAE指数在统计上是有益的。该研究将根据收集的南极磁力计数据创建SAE指数及其“近共轭”NAE指数来解决这些问题，并将分析这些指数的相互关系变化及其差异作为地磁活动、季节、世界时、磁性地方时、行星际磁场和太阳风等离子体参数的函数。所提议的努力所产生的更广泛的影响在于它对全球地球空间科学界的重要性，目前这些科学界仅在各种地球空间模型中使用标准声发射指数作为必要的输入。

The auroral electrojet index (AE) is used as an indicator of geomagnetic activity at high latitudes representing the strength of auroral electrojet currents in the Northern polar ionosphere. A similar AE index for the Southern hemisphere is not available due to lack of complete coverage the Southern auroral zone (half of which extends over the ocean) with continuous magnetometer observations. While in general global auroral phenomena are expected to be conjugate, differences have been observed in the conjugate observations from the ground and from the Earth's satellites. These differences indicate a need for an equivalent Southern auroral geomagnetic activity index. The goal of this award is to create the Southern AE (SAE) index that would accurately reflect auroral activity in that hemisphere. With this index, it would be possible to investigate the similarities and the cause of differences between the SAE and "standard" AE index from the Northern hemisphere. It would also make it possible to identify when the SAE does not provide a reliable calculation of the Southern hemisphere activity, and to determine when it is statistically beneficial to consider the SAE index in addition to the standard AE while analyzing geospace data from the Northern and Southern polar regions. The study will address these questions by creating the SAE index and its "near-conjugate" NAE index from collected Antarctic magnetometer data, and will analyze variations in the cross-correlation of these indices and their differences as a function of geomagnetic activity, season, Universal Time, Magnetic Local Time, and interplanetary magnetic field and solar wind plasma parameters. The broader impact resulting from the proposed effort is in its importance to the worldwide geospace scientific community that currently uses only the standard AE index in a variety of geospace models as necessary input.