Abstract: Burst and roar are names for two di↵erent types of radio emissions from the ionosphere,
associated with the aurora. The mechanism by which roar originates is well understood, and
places the origin of roar around peak ionospheric density, near the top of the ionosphere. By
contrast, there are two competing theories for the origin of burst, one of which suggests that
burst originates near the top of the ionosphere, while the other suggests that it originates near
the bottom. In this study, we use data from an antenna array in Sondrestrom, Greenland, to
test these theories of burst generation. We perform cross-spectral analysis on the data and
determine the directions of origin of each signal, then examine simultaneous occurrences of
burst and roar and compare the directions of arrival of the two types of emissions. We find
with greater than 99.99% confidence that for a given co-occurrence, the elevation of the burst
has more than a 50% probability of being higher than the elevation of the roar. We conclude
with 95.450% confidence that burst has at least a 66.3% probability of being the higher of the
two. Given the known origin elevation of roar, our findings lend support to the theory of burst
generation that places its origin near the top of the ionosphere.