Adrian Grocott

Dayside and nightside reconnection rates inferred from IMAGE FUV and Super Dual Auroral Radar Network data

The spectrographic imager at 121.8 nm (SI12) of the far ultraviolet (FUV) experiment onboard the IMAGE spacecraft produces global images of the Doppler-shifted Lyman α emission of the proton aurora. This emission is solely due to proton precipitation and is not contaminated by dayglow, allowing us to monitor the auroral oval on the dayside as well as on the nightside. Remote sensing of the polar aurora can be advantageously supplemented by use of ground-based data from the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) that monitors the ionospheric convective flow pattern in the polar region. In the present study, the SI12 images are used to determine the location of the open/closed field line boundary and to monitor its movement. The SuperDARN data are then used to compute the ionospheric electric field at the location of the open/closed boundary. The total electric field is then computed along the boundary accounting for its movement via Faradays law so that the dayside and nightside reconnection voltages can be derived. This procedure is applied to several substorm intervals observed simultaneously with IMAGE FUV and SuperDARN. The dayside reconnection voltage feeds the magnetosphere with open flux, which is later closed by nightside reconnection. The calculated dayside reconnection rate is consistent with the solar wind properties measured by the Geotail, Wind, and ACE satellites. We identify the presence of nightside reconnection due to pseudobreakups taking place during the growth phase. In several cases, we establish that the nightside reconnection rate is maximum at the time of the substorm expansion phase onset or shortly after, reaching ∼120 kV, and then slowly returns to undisturbed values of ∼30 kV. The flux closure rate can also start intensifying prior to expansion phase onset, producing pseudobreakups.

Formation and motion of a transpolar arc in response to dayside and nightside reconnection

We trace the formation and subsequent motion of a transpolar arc in response to dayside and nightside reconnection. Both high- and low-latitude dayside reconnection are observed, as well as periods of substorm and nonsubstorm nightside reconnection, during the 7-hour interval of interest on 19 January 2002. We speculate that the arc is formed by a burst of nonsubstorm nightside reconnection and that its subsequent motion is controlled predominantly by the rate of dayside high-latitude reconnection, siphoning open flux from the dusk sector polar cap to the dawn sector. The observations allow us to quantify the rates of reconnection: on the nightside, 35 and 100 kV during nonsubstorm- and substorm-related bursts, respectively; on the dayside, 30 and 100 kV for high- and low-latitude reconnection. The latter values give effective merging line lengths of 1 and 5.5 RE for northward and southward interplanetary magnetic field, respectively. We suggest that transpolar arc motion will be controlled not only by the By component of the IMF but also by the relative magnitude of the Bz component, when ∣By∣ > Bz motion will be dawnward for By 0 nT; however, when Bz > ∣By∣, we expect that the arc will move toward the noon-midnight meridian of the polar cap.

Compression of the Earth's magnetotail by interplanetary shocks directly drives transient magnetic flux closure

We use a novel method to evaluate the global opening and closure of magnetic flux in the terrestrial system, and to analyse two interplanetary shock passages that occurred during magnetically quiet periods. We find that, even under these quiet conditions, where the amount of open flux was already low, the compression of the magnetotail by the shocks still created intense but short-lived bursts of flux closure reaching ∼130 kV, comparable to values obtained shortly after a substorm onset, although no expansion phase developed. The results, supported by a global MHD simulation of the space environment, point to a trigger mechanism of flux closure directly driven by the solar wind compression, independent of the usual substorm expansion phase process.

Magnetosonic Mach number dependence of the efficiency of reconnection between planetary and interplanetary magnetic fields

We present a statistical investigation into the magnetosonic Mach number dependence of the efficiency of reconnection at the Earths dayside magnetopause. We use the transpolar voltage V PC, derived from radar observations of the ionospheric electric field, as a proxy for the dayside reconnection voltage. Our results show that the IMF clock angle dependence of V PC is closely approximated by the function f(

Dynamic auroral storms on Saturn as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope

\theta

Near-Earth substorm features from multiple satellite observations

) = sin2(

Interplanetary magnetic field control of fast azimuthal flows in the nightside high-latitude ionosphere

\theta

The influence of magnetospheric substorms on SuperDARN radar backscatter

/2), which we use in the derivation of a solar wind transfer function E* = E SW f(

An examination of inter-hemispheric conjugacy in a subauroral polarization stream

\theta

Superposed epoch analysis of the ionospheric convection evolution during substorms: IMF BY dependence

), wherein E SW is the solar wind electric field. We find that V PC is strongly related to E*, increasing almost linearly with small E* but saturating as E* becomes high. We also find that E* is strongly dependent on the magnetosonic Mach number, M MS, decreasing to near-zero values as M MS approaches 12, due principally to decreasing values of the IMF strength. V PC, on the other hand, is only weakly related to M MS and, for lower, more usual values of E*, actually shows a modest increase with increasing M MS. This result has implications for the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction at the outer planets where the Mach number is typically much higher than it is at 1 AU. Examples of SuperDARN convection maps from two high Mach number intervals are also presented, illustrating the existence of fairly typical reconnection driven flows. We thus find no evidence for a significant reduction in the magnetopause reconnection rate associated with high magnetosonic Mach numbers.