Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufmsm11b2022h&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #SM11B-2022
Physics
[2723] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetic Reconnection, [2740] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, [2744] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetotail, [2790] Magnetospheric Physics / Substorms
Scientific paper
The thinning of the near-Earth current sheet during the growth phase is of critical importance to understand geomagnetic substorms and the conditions that lead to the onset of the expansion phase. We have proposed that convection from the midnight tail region to the dayside as the cause for this current sheet thinning. Adiabatic convection from the near-Earth tail region toward the dayside must conserve the entropy on magnetic field lines. This constraint prohibits a source of the magnetic flux from a region further out in the magnetotail. Thus the near-Earth tail region is increasingly depleted of magnetic flux (the Erickson and Wolf [1980] problem) with entropy matching that of flux tubes that are eroded on the dayside. The process is examined by three-dimensional MHD simulations. The properties of the current sheet thinning are determined as a function of the magnitude of convection toward the dayside and the lobe boundary conditions. It is shown that the model yields a time scale, location, and other general characteristics of the current sheet evolution consistent with observations during the substorm growth phase.
Hsieh Michael
Ma Xiao
Otto Andreas
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