Magnetospheric Dynamics and the Onset of Auroral Substorms

Details Magnetospheric Dynamics and the Onset of Auroral Substorms Magnetospheric Dynamics and the Onset of Auroral Substorms

May 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002agusmsm41c..01a&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2002, abstract #SM41C-01

Physics

2744 Magnetotail, 2788 Storms And Substorms

Scientific paper

We used a global magnetohydrodynamic simulation to model the onset of a magnetospheric substorm and compared our results to auroral and magnetotail observations. Measurements from the Wind spacecraft taken during the substorm form its position upstream of the Earth were used as input to the MHD simulation. After assessing the validity of the model's results by comparing simulated time series with in situ observations, we investigated the time evolution of the plasma sheet during the substorm. A major goal of this study is to determine the relationship between the aurora and the dynamics of the near-Earth plasma sheet. We assumed the simulated energy flux into the ionosphere to be the analog of auroral emissions and found good agreement between the modeled aurora and the auroral images from the VIS instrument on the Polar spacecraft. The locations of the aurora were then mapped along field lines obtained from the simulation into the equatorial magnetosphere. Many features of the observed changes in the aurora are found in the MHD results. The simulation showed a narrow channel of high-speed earthward flow from a neutral line that caused a series of vortices to form near the Earth. The first of these formed on the dawn side. Eventually, additional reconnection occurred resulting in a region of tailward flows creating a magnetic flux rope which was observed by the Geotail spacecraft. Shortly after that the reconnection event, driven flows formed a second vortex duskward of midnight. The formation of this vortex corresponded with the onset of auroral emissions observed on Polar.

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