Tailward Flows with Northward Magnetic Field in the Earth’s Magnetotail

Details Tailward Flows with Northward Magnetic Field in the Earth’s Magnetotail Tailward Flows with Northward Magnetic Field in the Earth’s Magnetotail

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufmsm43a1735g&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #SM43A-1735

Physics

[2744] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetotail

Scientific paper

In a series of global MHD simulations of the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth’s magnetosphere, we explored magnetospheric convection during geomagnetic active times and found strong tailward flows on closed magnetic field lines. These flows were part of large scale vortices in the magnetosphere. Motivated by these simulations, we have carried out an observational investigation of flows in the tail. We used Geotail LEP and MGF data from 1997 to 2006 and employed a computer program to search for strong flows (both earthward and tailward) in the inner central plasma sheet in the center tail (-10 < YGSM < 10), near Earth (-15 < XGSM < -10) region. By comparing the earthward flows and tailward flows, we draw the conclusion that tailward flows play an important role in the transportation of mass flux, energy flux, and magnetic flux. Among the tailward flows events, we selected 19 intervals to study in detail. We use a systematic rotation (either clockwise or counterclockwise) of the flow vector in the equatorial plane as the indication of the existence of a vortex. By studying the 19 intervals, we find that 10 of them have such behaviors, which strongly suggests a correlation between large scale vortices and the tailward flows as the simulation predicted. By examining the AE indices during flow times, we find that the high velocity flows (both Earthward and tailward) are related to geomagnetic activity. But the causal relationship between substorms and high velocity flows is not obvious.

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