Neutral wind contributions to ionospheric Joule heating at high latitudes

Total ionospheric Joule heating variations have been studied with special focus on the effect of ionospheric neutral winds. Electric field data from the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) have been combined with models for the neutral wind, ionospheric Pedersen conductivity and magnetic field to calculate two Joule heating components; the convection heating and wind correction terms. Due to the motion of a dusk-side neutral wind cell, semi-diurnal variations in the wind correction are shown to reduce heating at some universal times, whilst enhancing it at others. This means that the wind correction propagates into the total Joule heating, transforming the usual diurnal trend due to day-night conductivity changes into a semi-diurnal double peak, which becomes increasingly prominent at higher levels of geomagnetic activity. We show that there are significant contributions from the wind correction term across all seasons and activity levels which act to consistently modify Joule heating from that deduced using ion convection alone.