High and Low-Altitude Signatures of the Plasmasphere as a Source of Magnetospheric Ions

Details High and Low-Altitude Signatures of the Plasmasphere as a Source of Magnetospheric Ions High and Low-Altitude Signatures of the Plasmasphere as a Source of Magnetospheric Ions

May 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agusm..sm52d06f&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2001, abstract #SM52D-06

Physics

2431 Ionosphere/Magnetosphere Interactions (2736), 2475 Polar Cap Ionosphere, 2760 Plasma Convection, 2768 Plasmasphere

Scientific paper

During disturbed conditions, an enhanced electric field at sub-auroral latitudes results in rapid sunward convection from the post-noon mid-latitude ionosphere which carries high-density solar-produced F-region plasma through the dayside cleft and into the polar cap [Foster, J.Geophys. Res., 98,1675, 1993]. Radar observations indicate the repeatability of this feature, termed Storm Enhanced Density (SED), and its occurrence in both moderately and strongly disturbed conditions.This advecting plasma appears within the polar ionosphere as a plasma tongue or patches which follow the convection streamlines anti-sunward to the nightside auroral oval. Ionospheric modeling confirms the low-latitude source of the polar patches and the role of the convection electric field in forming them. From a magnetospheric perspective, the ionospheric observations are of the feet of flux tubes which are stripped from the outer plasmasphere and carried towards the dayside magnetopause forming plasmaspheric tails or detached plasma regions. At high altitudes, cold plasmaspheric ions are observed immediately adjacent to the noontime magnetopause during magnetic storms. Elphic et al [Geophys. Res. Lett, 24, 365, 1997] have examined the magnetospheric flow pattern and ion fluxes of outer-plasmaspheric flux tubes which convect to the magnetopause where they reconnect with the IMF and eventually convect towards the middle of the magnetotail. There they can participate in the nightside reconnection, injecting their cargo of ionospheric ions into the magnetotail acceleration region.The recent study by Su et al. [Geophys. Res. Lett, 28, 111, 2001] finds a direct mapping between the ionospheric SED and high-altitude observations of filled plasmaspheric flux tubes arriving at the dayside reconnection region. This strongly suggests that the SED and polar patches trace the trajectories of plasmaspheric ions from their low-latitude source through the cusp and magnetotail, to the nightside auroral acceleration region, and that the stripping off of the plasmasphere/ionosphere by the enhanced dayside electric field provides a source of ionospheric ions to the magnetosphere.

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