Self-Consistent Modeling of Electron Precipitation and Responses in the Ionosphere: Application to Low-Altitude Energization During Substorms

We report a new modeling capability that self-consistently couples physics-based magnetospheric electron precipitation with its impact on the ionosphere. Specifically, the ring current model RAM-SCBE is two-way coupled to an ionospheric electron transport model GLOW (GLobal airglOW), representing a significant improvement over previous models, in which the ionosphere is either treated as a 2-D spherical boundary of the magnetosphere or is driven by empirical precipitation models that are incapable of capturing small-scale, transient variations. The new model enables us to study the impact of substorm-associated, spectrum-resolved electron precipitation on the 3-D ionosphere. We found that after each substorm injection, a high-energy tail of precipitation is produced in the dawn sector outside the plasmapause, by energetic electrons (10 < E < 100 keV) scattered by whistler-mode chorus waves. Consequently, an ionospheric sublayer characterized by enhanced Pedersen conductivity arises at unusually low altitude (∼85 km), with its latitudinal width of ∼5–10° in the auroral zone. The sublayer structure appears intermittently, in correlation with recurrent substorm injections. It propagates eastward from the nightside to the dayside in the same drift direction of source electrons injected from the plasma sheet, resulting in global impact within the ionosphere. This study demonstrates the model's capability of revealing complex cross-scale interactions in the geospace environment.