Preliminary evidence for enhanced solar wind-magnetosphere energy transfer during periods of Alfvénic IMF

Details Preliminary evidence for enhanced solar wind-magnetosphere energy transfer during periods of Alfvénic IMF Preliminary evidence for enhanced solar wind-magnetosphere energy transfer during periods of Alfvénic IMF

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufmsm31c..07l&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #SM31C-07

Physics

2411 Electric Fields (2712), 2712 Electric Fields (2411), 2744 Magnetotail, 2760 Plasma Convection (2463), 2784 Solar Wind/Magnetosphere Interactions

Scientific paper

During the past winter, campaigns were set up with the Sondrestrom and Poker Flat incoherent scatter radars to provide dayside and nightside radar observations of ionospheric flows simultaneously with nightside plasma sheet flow observations from multiple THEMIS spacecraft. We have compared observations obtained during periods of large amplitude Alfvénic magnetic field fluctuations within the solar wind, which occur primarily within high-speed solar wind streams, with observations during periods of relatively steady southward and northward IMF. This comparison provides evidence that the average flow speed within the dayside and nightside ionosphere and within the nightside plasma sheet is substantially enhanced when the Alfvénic magnetic fluctuations impinge upon the magnetosphere relative to flows under steady southward and northward IMF conditions. Observations during a period of Alfvénic magnetic fluctuations without high-speed solar wind indicate that the enhanced flows are at least in part directly due to the Alfvénic magnetic fluctuations and are not solely due to the high-speed solar wind. While these results require further corroboration, if true, they would suggest that, in addition to the well-known contribution from the direction and magnitude of the IMF and from solar wind dynamic pressure, Alfvénic magnetic fluctuations contribute directly to the strength of solar wind magnetosphere- ionosphere coupling. A speculative possibility for why this might occur is resonance between the Alfvénic IMF fluctuations and the natural oscillation frequencies of the magnetosphere.

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