Active Roles of the Ionosphere in the Electrodynamic M-I Coupling

Details Active Roles of the Ionosphere in the Electrodynamic M-I Coupling Active Roles of the Ionosphere in the Electrodynamic M-I Coupling

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufmsa24a..02z&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #SA24A-02

Physics

2411 Electric Fields (2712), 2431 Ionosphere/Magnetosphere Interactions (2736), 2435 Ionospheric Disturbances, 2447 Modeling And Forecasting

Scientific paper

Magnetosphere-ionosphere (M-I) coupling is a key element in the Sun-Earth connection and is of fundamental importance to understanding the basic properties of the ionosphere and magnetosphere and how the solar variations affect the near-Earth space environment. One of the most important couplings between the magnetosphere and the ionosphere is the electrodynamic coupling represented by the convection electric field, field-aligned currents, and conductivity. In the recent years, it has been increasingly realized that in the electrodynamics of the M-I coupling the ionosphere is not a passive medium with the magnetosphere acting as a driver, instead, the ionosphere can play very active roles. These active ionospheric roles not only exist in the M-I electrodynamic processes initiated in the ionosphere (terminator effect, solar eclipse, etc.), but also have been manifested in the M-I processes initiated or driven by the magnetosphere, for example, substorms. In this presentation, we will use quantitative results from a time-dependent electrodynamic model of M-I coupling to demonstrate and discuss various aspects of the active ionospheric roles in the electrodynamic M-I coupling, including 1) how the ionospheric conditions determine the loading of the magnetospheric convection on the ionosphere and how these convection patterns are distorted at the ionospheric altitude; 2) under what conditions, the ionosphere can generate its own field-aligned currents and small-scale electric field structures that are not in the magnetospheric driver; 3) how the ionosphere launches its own Alfven waves, thus modifying the ionospheric convection field and sending the information of the ionospheric dynamic changes back to magnetosphere; 4) properties of the M-I processes without the magnetospheric driver. It is clear from our modeling results that the ionosphere plays important role in generating small-scale plasma and electrodynamic structures and these small-scale structures are essential for us to understand the physics of the M-I system and to specify the near-Earth space weather.

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