High Latitude Plasma Structure (HLPS) Wednesday 19 June 2002 Front Range Theatre 01:00-03:00 pm

This workshop will focus on two issues of the high latitude plasma structures. The first will be the presentations of the results from previous campaigns that have been carried out in the last 2 years: January, 2001, December 2001 and January 2002. These campaigns were conducted around Sondrestrom and Svalbard. The main goals of these campaigns were to make detailed observations of the formation of patches and study the electrodynamics of polar cap sun-aligned arcs.

Dates for the campaigns were:
Jan 18, 2001 - Jan 23, 2001
December 2001
Jan 9, 2002 - Jan 18, 2002

The second issue will be the study of importance of the cusp electrodynamics as a source of plasma structures. The ionospheric foot prints of the cusp region maintain contacted, probably in a quasi-steady fashion, with the merging of the solar wind and magnetosheath magnetic fields. The electric fields, the variability of these fields, the field-aligned currents, and the particle precipitation that exist in the ionospheric cusp constantly modify the dayside ionosphere and create medium and small-scale processes. One of the most prominent responses of the high latitude ionosphere is the formation of plasma density structures. We will focus on characterizing the plasma structures as a function of the solar wind parameters. We will also discuss the measurements and campaigns that need to be done in future to fully understand the formation, lifetime and decay of the plasma structures that exist in the cusp region.