Large thermospheric neutral density enhancements in the cusp region have
been examined for many years. The CHAMP satellite for example has
enabled many observations of the perturbation, showing that it is
mesoscale in size and exists on statistical timescales. Further studies
examining the relationship with magnetospheric energy input have shown
that fine-scale Poynting fluxes are associated with the density
perturbations on a case-by-case basis, whilst others have found that
mesoscale downward fluxes also exist in the cusp region statistically.
In this study, we use nearly 8 years of the overlapping SuperDARN and
AMPERE datasets to generate global-scale patterns of the high-latitude
and height-integrated Poynting flux into the ionosphere, with a time
resolution of two minutes. From these, average patterns are generated
based on the IMF orientation. We show the cusp is indeed an important
feature in the Poynting flux maps, but the magnitude does not correlate
well with statistical neutral mass density perturbations observed by the
CHAMP satellite on similar spatial scales. Mesoscale height-integrated
Poynting fluxes thus cannot fully account for the cusp neutral mass
density enhancement, meaning energy deposition in the F-region or on
fine-scales, which is not captured by our analysis, could be the primary
driver.