Inversion of the Auroral Electrojets from Magnetometer Chain Data Based on the Flexible Tolerance Method

Abstract

An improved method is developed to invert a one-dimensional east-west electrojet from the H component of the geomagnetic disturbances measured along a meridian chain of magnetometer stations. This nonlinear inversion method is based on the flexible tolerance method. The main difference between this new method and the previous methods is that the height, the width and the location of the auroral electrojet current are determined together from the data by the flexible tolerance method, rather than assumed or calculated independently as in the previous methods. It should be noted also that the method presented in this paper is fast enough to allow a real-time display of the inverted electrojet current distribution by a workstation.