The rapid change in the Earth’s magnetosphere caused by solar wind disturbances has been an important part of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction.However most of the previous studies focused on the perturbation of the Earth’s magnetic field caused by solar wind dynamic pressure changes.In this paper,we studied the response of geosynchronous magnetic field and the magnetic field to the rapid southward turning of interplanetary magnetic field during the interval 1350 1420 UT on 7May 2007.During this event,BZ component of the interplanetary magnetic field decreased from 15 nT to 10 nT within 3 min(1403 1406 UT).The geosynchronous magnetic field measured by three geosynchronous satellites(GOES 10 12)first increased and then decreased.The variations of magnetic field strength in the morning sector(9 10 LT)were much larger than those in the dawn sector(5 LT).Meanwhile,the H components of geomagnetic field on the ground have similar response features but exhibit latitude and LT dependent variations.Compared with H components,the D components do not have regular variations.Although the solar wind dynamical pressure encounters small variations,the magnetic field both in space and on the ground does not display similar variations.Therefore,the increase of geomagnetic field in the dawn sector is caused by the southward turning of IMF(interplanetary magnetic field)BZ.These results will help to better understand the coupling process of geomagnetic filed and interplanetary magnetic field.
In an attempt to study the flow bursts in the Earth＇s plasma sheet we select an event that took place on August 7, 2004 in the expansion phase of a substorm, using data from the geomagnetic index, solar wind data, plasma and magnetic field observa- tions from C1 Cluster satellite （the Cluster mission has 4 satellites） and from Double Star TC-1 satellite. In MHD approach, TC-1 firstly observed the tailward flow, then the earthward, and finally the flow altemated in two directions. C1 firstly ob- served the earthward plasma flow, and then the tailward plasma flow. Before flow bursts are observed by TC-1 and C1, there are disturbances in local entropy with their tailward local entropy larger than those of the earthward. The kinetic features of the plasma flow observed by C1 are similar to those in MHD. However, kinetic characteristics of the plasma flow observed by TC-1 are far more than the description in MHD. The inadequacy mainly exists in two cases： （i） the firstly enhanced tailward flows given in MHD are found without significant increase of the energetic tailward flux; （ii） the almost stagnant flow in MHD is composed of the enhanced energetic ion flux in both earthward and tailward directions. The earthward flow burst observed by TC-1 might be multiple overshoots and rebounds. The earthward flow burst observed by C1 might be simply rebounded in the near-Earth. The pulsation observed by C1 is earlier than that observed by TC-1 with the former intensity less than that of the latter. After the energetic ion flux in the tailward direction is significantly enhanced, the power spectrum intensity of the ULF wave commences to increase obviously, which may suggest that the stream instability is closely correlated with ULF pulsations.
MA YuDuanCAO JinBinFU HuiShanREME H.DANDOURAS I.YANG JunYingWANG ZhiQiangTAO DanYANG Jian
This paper, using the dataset of BBFs （bursty bulk flows） observed by two Cluster satellites C1 and C4, studies the difference between onset times of BBFs observed by C1 and C4. It is found that the onset time differences of most of BBFs observed by Cl and C4 are smaller than 60 s. The average onset time difference of BBFs of CI and C4 is 68.5 s. The probabilities of onset time difference of BBFs of C1 and C4 larger than 30, 60, 90 and 120 s are respectively 55%, 35%, 27% and 23%. The largest onset time difference of BBFs of C1 and C4 decreases with the increase of earthward component of maximum velocities of BBFs. The onset time difference of BBFs of C1 and C4 results from the velocity inhomogeneity inside the flow channel of BBF, which may be produced in propagation path and/or in source region of BBFs. Such a wide range of onset time difference of BBFs suggests that the velocity inhomogeneity inside the flow channel of BBF is various. These results are very important to the current study of substorm research based on THEMIS data because they indicate that it is impossible to determine the onset time of BBF with a single satellite.
