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Measurements of field-aligned currents from the Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment are combined with measurements of far ultraviolet emissions from the Global Ultraviolet Imager on the Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics satellite to examine the correlation between parallel currents and auroral electron energy flux. The energy flux is derived from the far ultraviolet emissions in the N-2 Lyman-Birge-Hopfield bands. We find that energy flux correlates with field-aligned currents in both upward and downward current regions. The correlations vary with magnetic local time with the strongest dependences near magnetic midnight. The data are binned and averaged to construct a model of precipitating particle energy flux as a function of field-aligned current and magnetic local time. With Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment data as input, the model yields accurate estimates of the hemispheric power input from precipitating particles.

Plain Language Summary One of the major sources of energy deposited into Earth's atmosphere is from precipitating particles associated with the aurora at high latitudes. Quantifying the amount of energy from auroral precipitation is a long-standing problem because of the absence of global observations. We show that auroral energy flux correlates with electric currents along Earth's magnetic field at high latitudes. Because global measurements of these parallel currents are now available continuously from the Iridium satellite constellation, the observed correlations can be used to estimate energy flux from precipitating particles on a routine basis.