Bursty flows in magnetosphere influence ionosphere

Abstract

In Earth's plasma sheet—a region of dense ionized gas that lies around the equatorial plane and extends into the magnetotail—plasma flows in large‐scale smooth flows as well as in small‐scale bursts. Studies have investigated the individual bursty flows but not the large‐scale effects of these bursts. To investigate how the bursty flows affect the magnetosphere and its coupling to the ionosphere, Yang et al. conducted two simulations, one with only large‐scale flows and the other with random bubbles and blobs of plasma flowing both toward Earth and away from it. They found that the bursty flows significantly altered the magnetic properties of the plasma sheet and the distributions of current in the ionosphere and that the properties found in the bursty flow simulations matched observations much better than the simulations without bursty flows.