Abstract. We present a study of statistical relationships between SAR arc intensities acquired by the Pacific Northwest Laboratory Photometer Network during 1978-1988 and solar and geomagnetic activity indices Dst, F10.7, and Kp by use of the method of multiple regression analysis. We found significant correlations between intensity and all of the indices involved. In the present work we show for the first time that the partial correlation coefficients depend on the time offset, t, between the time of SAR arc intensity observations and the onset of the geomagnetic storm recovery phase, with the largest correlations being observed when 8 h < t < 16 h. It is also shown that there are significant differences between partial correlation coefficients calculated for SAR arcs associated with strong (Dstmin< -100 nT) and weak (Dstmin>-100 nT) geomagnetic storms. We observe also that the multiple correlation coefficients for strong storms are much larger than for weak ones. We found that the variations in the electron temperature, Te, in the SAR arc region are not mainly produced by variations in the electron density of the ionosphere but are strongly driven by the additional heating of the electron gas due to an interaction of the ring current ions and the plasmaspheric electrons. As a result, variations of Te in the SAR arc region with characteristic time scales from several minutes to several hours are stipulated by time variations of ring current parameters.Key words. Atmospheric composition and structure (airglow and aurora) · Ionosphere (ionosphere · atmosphere interactions; ionosphere · magnetosphere interactions)