A New MEPED‐Based Precipitating Electron Data Set

The work presented here introduces a new data set for inclusion of energetic electron precipitation (EEP) in climate model simulations. Measurements made by the medium energy proton and electron detector (MEPED) instruments onboard both the Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites and the European Space Agency Meteorological Operational satellites are used to create global maps of precipitating electron fluxes. Unlike most previous data sets, the electron fluxes are computed using both the 0° and 90° MEPED detectors. Conversion of observed, broadband electron count rates to differential spectral fluxes uses a linear combination of analytical functions instead of a single function. Two dimensional maps of electron spectral flux are created using Delaunay triangulation to account for the relatively sparse nature of the MEPED sampling. This improves on previous studies that use a 1D interpolation over magnetic local time or L‐shell zonal averaging of the MEPED data. A Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) simulation of the southern hemisphere 2003 winter using the new precipitating electron data set is shown to agree more closely with observations of odd nitrogen than WACCM simulations using other MEPED‐based electron data sets. Simulated EEP‐induced odd nitrogen increases led to ozone losses of more than 15% in the polar stratosphere near 10 hPa in September of 2003. Plain Language Summary This study introduces an updated version of an energetic electron precipitation (EEP) data set for use in global model simulations and precipitating electron flux comparisons. EEP is important because it can cause significant chemistry changes in the middle atmosphere, especially during years of high geomagnetic activity. The EEP data set is based on the Medium Energy Proton and Electron Detector (MEPED) instruments aboard the Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites and European Space Agency Meteorological Observational satellites. EEP fluxes are calculated using both the 0° and 90° MEPED telescopes, which results in better estimates of precipitating electron fluxes than methods based only on the 0° detector. The flux calculations also take advantage of a MEPED proton channel that indirectly measures relativistic electrons with energies >700 keV. Therefore, the new EEP data set has an upper level energy limit of nearly 10 MeV. The new EEP calculation uses an improved mapping method and removes data artifacts that were present in the previous version. This investi