Light ion dynamics in the topside ionosphere and plasmasphere during geomagnetic storms

Abstract

Storm-time topside ionosphere plasma composition, especially the light ion fraction, is an important parameter which controls magnetosphere–ionosphere coupling, plays a part in the growth of local instabilities, and provides information about the ring current, ion upflow, movement of ionization and other important physical processes and parameters. Ion composition is difficult to estimate on fine scales as empirical models tend to be parametrized by fixed inputs, ignoring the role of memory in plasma, and to preferentially capture large scales, while ground radars have limited coverage. In particular, ionospheric composition measurements at mid-latitude are lacking. Here we show, using the new Swarm SLIDEM effective ion mass measurement, a superposed epoch analysis of storm-time dayside and nightside effective ion mass changes, demonstrating the extent and timescales of motion of the [O+]/[H+] transition height with the main phase of geomagnetic storms, as well as directly observing evidence for the latitude dependence of these dynamics.Graphical