Multi-Spacecraft Observations of Magnetic Cloud Driven Interplanetary Shocks

Details Multi-Spacecraft Observations of Magnetic Cloud Driven Interplanetary Shocks Multi-Spacecraft Observations of Magnetic Cloud Driven Interplanetary Shocks

May 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002agusmsh22d..10s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2002, abstract #SH22D-10

Physics

2111 Ejecta, Driver Gases, And Magnetic Clouds, 2139 Interplanetary Shocks

Scientific paper

A large fraction of magnetic clouds travel fast enough compared to the ambient solar wind that they drive strong interplanetary shocks. Even though recent studies have established that interplanetary shock surfaces are often substantially corrugated on the scale-length of the Earth magnetosphere, and magnetic clouds as they travel through the interplanetary medium encounter a variable solar wind background suggesting a variable shock front geometry, this study reveals that the cloud orientation still has a strong organizing effect on the driven shock orientation. Specifically, using multi-spacecraft observations primarily from ACE and WIND, and from IMP 8 and Geotail when available, the 3-dimensional shape of interplanetary shocks driven by magnetic clouds has been determined on a 100 Earth-radii scale-length using a full non-linear least-squares "Rankine-Hugoniot" technique. It appears that for the largest and fastest magnetic clouds the normals of the driven shocks are nearly perpendicular to the cloud axis while the orientation in the plane perpendicular to the cloud axis, while showing some evidence of flaring, is strongly a function of the encounter impact parameter. This result has important consequences for the determination of the cloud sheath and, hence the modeling of the cloud-solar wind interaction.

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