The magnetogram inversion technique (MIT) has been demonstrated as a powerful $quot;remote sensing tool$quot; in estimating ionospheric quantities, such as ionospheric current, field-aligned current, electric potential and Joule heating rate etc. Furthermore it is now possible to infer instantaneous patterns of such global distributions with a high time resolution (say, 5 min) through the numerical method. However, the electric potential distribution estimated from the MIT is very sensitive to the choice of ionospheric conductivity models. It is a serious drawback of the method, since the electric potential over the polar region is a very important quantity reflecting the efficiency of the solar wind-magnetosphere coupling. Thus a realistic conductivity distribution over the entire polar ionosphere is acute. In this paper, we introduce a general concept of ionospheric electric conductivity along with several methods of estimating it.

• 安炳鎬