Looking for Ohm's Law in the Ionosphere

Space Weather is the study of how the solar wind conditions interact with the near-Earth environment and thereafter affects technologies and society. However, the dynamics of this interaction can be very complicated. The goal of this study is to determine if using a simple circuit as a proxy for the solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere interaction holds for determining the conductivity of the ionosphere. Being able to describe the ionosphere as a simple circuit where the solar wind provides the voltage, the ionosphere itself acts as a resistor, and the voltage over the ionosphere drives a current should allow us to consistently determine the ionospheric conductivity from Ohm's law. We expect the summer solstices to be more conducting than the winter solstices, since conductivity is driven in part by solar EUV radiation. Using Birkeland Current data provided by AMPERE data set and the solar wind electric field from the OMNI data set, we present results from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016.