Online system for analyzing currents in the upper ionosphere according to Swarm satellite data

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the TeslaSwarm online system [http://aleph.gcras.ru/teslaswarm] for visualizing field-aligned currents in the upper ionosphere, using data from Swarm low-orbit satellites. The system provides researchers with a simple and convenient tool for event selection and detailed analysis of currents and electromagnetic fields in the upper ionosphere. The system user can select satellite passages over a given region, visualize the geomagnetic field structure and field-aligned currents, compare the pattern of field-aligned currents with the auroral particle precipitation map, using the OVATION-Prime model, and save the selected parameters in a file in text format. We demonstrate advantages of the developed system over its foreign analogues. In practice, the collection and pre-processing of raw data for experiments make up about 80 % of all work with data. The proposed online system largely saves the user from the most time-consuming work of choosing the required satellite passage segments and calculating the characteristics of interest from raw measurements.

Keywords

• field-aligned electric currents
• visualization of field-aligned currents
• swarm satellite data
• geomagnetic field structure