Occurrence rate of earthward‐propagating dipolarization fronts

Abstract

The occurrence rate of earthward‐propagating dipolarization fronts (DFs) is investigated in this paper based on the 9 years (2001–2009) of Cluster 1 data. For the first time, we select the DF events by fitting the characteristic increase inBzusing a hyperbolic tangent function. 303 earthward‐propagating DFs are found; they have on average a duration of 4 s and aBz increase of 8 nT. DFs have the maximum occurrence at ZGSM ≈ 0 and r ≈ 15 RE with one event occurring every 3.9 hours, where r is the distance to the center of the Earth in the XYGSM plane. The maximum occurrence rate at ZGSM ≈ 0 can be explained by the steep and large increase of Bz near the central current sheet, which is consistent with previous simulations. Along the r direction, the occurrence rate increases gradually from r ≈ 20 to r ≈ 15 RE but decreases rapidly from r ≈ 15 to r ≈ 10 RE. This may be due to the increasing pileup of the magnetic flux from r ≈ 20 to r ≈ 15 RE and the strong background magnetic field at r <∼13 RE, where the magnetic field changes from the tail‐like to dipolar shape. The maximum occurrence rate of DFs (one event per 3.9 hours) is comparable to that of substorms, indicating a relation between the two.