BARREL Observations of Microburst Events With a Slowly‐Varying Component

Abstract

Abstract Electron microburst precipitation has been shown to have significant potential for depletion of the outer radiation belt. We present observations from the Balloon Array for Radiation belt Relativistic Electron Losses (BARREL) of six (five unique and one dual‐balloon observation) microburst events, each containing minutes to hours of persistent microbursts. We find that each event included a slowly‐varying smooth precipitation component underlying the bursty component. The smooth component has not yet been fully characterized in the literature; we have written a program to identify microburst events and quantify the relative contributions of each component in the BARREL data. In all six events analyzed, the smooth component contributed more to the total X‐ray counts measured, indicating that the smooth component could contribute significantly to radiation belt loss.

Keywords

• radiation belts
• microbursts
• balloons
• electron precipitation