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Theoretical Study Of The Effect Of Ionospheric Return Currents On The Electron Temperature, Robert W. Schunk, Jan Josef Sojka, M. D. Bowline

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An electron heat flow can occur in a partially ionized plasma in response to either an electron temperature gradient (thermal conduction) or an electron current (thermoelectric heat flow). The former process has been extensively studied, while the latter process has received relatively little attention. Therefore a time-dependent three-dimensional model of the high-latitude ionosphere was used to study the effect of field-aligned ionospheric return currents on auroral electron temperatures for different seasonal and solar cycle conditions as well as for different upper boundary heat fluxes. The results of this study lead to the following conclusions: (1) The average, large-scale, return current …