DMSP Poynting Flux: Data Processing and Inter-spacecraft Comparisons | CU Experts

Poynting flux calculated from LEO spacecraft in-situ ion drift and; magnetic field measurements is an important measure of energy exchange; between the magnetosphere and ionosphere. Defense Meteorological; Satellite Program (DMSP) spacecraft provide an extensive back-catalog of; ion drift and magnetic perturbation measurements, from which; quasi-steady Poynting flux could be calculated. However, since DMSP are; operations-focused spacecraft, data must be carefully preprocessed for; research use. We describe an automated approach for calculating; earthward Poynting flux focusing on pre-processing and quality control.; We produce a Poynting flux dataset using 9 satellite-years of DMSP F15,; F16 and F18 observations. To validate our process we inter-compare; Poynting flux from different spacecraft using more than 2000 magnetic; conjunction events. We find no serious systematic differences. We; further describe and apply an equal-area binning technique to obtain; average spatial patterns of Poynting flux, magnetic perturbation,; electric field and ion drift velocity. We perform our analysis using all; components of electric and magnetic field and comment on the adverse; consequences of the typical single-electric-field-component DMSP; Poynting flux approximation on inter-spacecraft agreement. Including; full-field components significantly increases the relative strength of; near-cusp Poynting flux and increases the integrated high-latitude; Poynting flux by ~25%

VIVO