Since the Voyager mission it is known that Saturn Kilometric adiation (SKR) is strongly influenced by external forces, i.e., the solar wind and in particular the solar wind ram pressure.

Saturn kilometric radiation (SKR) is an intense auroral non-thermal radio emission with comparable characteristics to the Earth?s Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR) (Kaiser et al., 1984). A series of papers have provided further evidence that the SKR is strongly controlled by the solar wind, in particular by the solar ram pressure (Desch, 1982; Desch and Rucker, 1983; Desch and Rucker, 1985).

The long term variability of SKR can also be seen at periodicities ~13 days and ~25 days due to the response of an occasional two-sector interplanetary magnetic field structure in the solar wind data (Lecacheux et al., 1997). Specific plasma instabilities such as the central flute instability, as outlined by Curtis et al. (1986), and initiating electron precipitation by the Kelvin?Helmholtz instability (Galopeau et al., 1995) or, alternatively, by existing upwards field-aligned currents between open and close magnetic field lines at the morning side of the Saturnian magnetosphere (Cowley et al., 2004) may be driving processes for the generation of SKR. The relation between SKR and Saturn?s aurorae has recently been investigated using Cassini RPWS data (Gurnett et al., 2004) and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations suggesting an Earth-like correspondence between bright auroral features and SKR (Kurth et al., 2005).