Influence of Auroral Streamers on Rapid Evolution of Ionospheric SAPS Flows

Subauroral polarization streams (SAPS) often show large, rapid enhancements above their slowly varying component. We present simultaneous observations from ground‐based all‐sky imagers and flows from the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network radars to investigate the relationship between auroral phenomena and flow enhancement. We first identified auroral streamers approaching the equatorward boundary of the auroral oval to examine how often the subauroral flow increased. We also performed the reverse query starting with subauroral flow enhancements and then evaluated the auroral conditions. In the forward study, 98% of the streamers approaching the equatorward boundary were associated with SAPS flow enhancements reaching ~700 m/s and typically hundreds of m/s above background speeds. The reverse study reveals that flow enhancements associated with streamers (60%) and enhanced larger‐scale convection (37%) contribute to SAPS flow enhancements. The strong correlation of auroral streamers with rapid evolution (approximately minutes) of SAPS flows suggests that transient fast earthward plasma sheet flows can often lead to westward SAPS flow enhancements in the subauroral region and that such enhancements are far more common than only during substorms because of the much more frequent occurrences of streamers under various geomagnetic conditions. We also found a strong correlation between flow duration and streamer duration and a weak correlation between SAPS flow velocity and streamer intensity. This result suggests that intense flow bursts in the plasma sheet (which correlate with intense streamers) are associated with intense SAPS ionospheric flows perhaps by enhancing the ring current pressure and localized pressure gradients when they are able to penetrate close enough to Earth. Key Points SAPS flow enhancement are associated with auroral streamers Plasma sheet flow bursts may lead to SAPS ionospheric flow increases by enhancing ring current pressure Streamer extends equatorward and turns westward following convection; thus, equatorward flows could be associated with SAPS flow increases