Ionospheric traveling vortex generation by solar wind buffeting of the magnetosphere

Details Ionospheric traveling vortex generation by solar wind buffeting of the magnetosphere Ionospheric traveling vortex generation by solar wind buffeting of the magnetosphere

Feb 1991

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1991jgr....96.1661k&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research (ISSN 0148-0227), vol. 96, Feb. 1, 1991, p. 1661-1667.

Physics

77

Earth Magnetosphere, Polar Cusps, Solar Wind, Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances, Buffeting, Flux Transfer Events, Vortices

Scientific paper

Traveling ionospheric vortices observed near the polar cusp boundary have been interpreted as signatures of impulsive reconnection (or flux transfer events) on the magnetopause, but neither the sense of motion nor the phase speed of the disturbances in consistent with the assumed generation mechanism. An alternative interpretation as the ionospheric signature of the response to fluctuating solar wind pressure can account for the reported features of the ionospheric perturbances. The solar wind pressure perturbation established vortical flow on magnetopause flux tubes and drives a guided shear wave along polar cusp field lines into the ionosphere. The guided shear wave carries the field-aligned currents needed to couple the magnetopause flow to ionospheric flow. The elementary form of the ionospheric disturbance in horizontal flow, electric field, and field-aligned current is dipolar in structure, with the flow near the center predominantly meridional and of the order of 100 km/s for pressure perturbations reported as typical in the solar wind.

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