Abstract
This paper presents how the magnetosphere–plasmasphere–ionosphere system was affected as a whole during the geomagnetic storm peaking on 27 May 2017. The interplanetary conditions, the magnetospheric response in terms of the magnetopause motion, and the ionospheric current flow pattern were investigated using data, respectively, from the WIND spacecraft, from GOES15, GOES13, THEMIS E, THEMIS D and THEMIS A satellites and from the INTERMAGNET magnetometer array. The main objective of the work is to investigate the plasmaspheric dynamics under disturbed conditions and its possible relation to the ionospheric one; to reach this goal, the equatorial plasma mass densities derived from geomagnetic field line resonance observations at the European quasi-Meridional Magnetometer Array (EMMA) and total electron content values obtained through three GPS receivers close to EMMA were jointly considered. Despite the complexity of physical mechanisms behind them, we found a similarity between the ionospheric and plasmaspheric characteristic recovery times. Specifically, the ionospheric characteristic time turned out to be ~ 1.5 days, ~ 2 days and ~ 3.1 days, respectively, at L ~ 3, L ~ 4 and L ~ 5, while the plasmaspheric one, for similar L values, ranged from ~ 1 day to more than 4 days.
Highlights
The coupling among the solar wind (SW), the magnetosphere and the ionosphere represents an important subject of scientific interest, in particular in the Space Weather context
Due to the good data coverage in terms of both satellites and ground-based observations, we gave a global picture of the plasmasphere–magnetosphere–ionosphere system response to the interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME): We analyzed the interplanetary conditions through data from the WIND spacecraft; we evaluated the magnetosphere response using measurements from GOES15, GOES13, THEMIS E, THEMIS D and THEMIS A satellites; we figured out the ionospheric current flow pattern using data from the INTERMAGNET ground magnetometer array
According to the estimated shock characteristics, the interplanetary shock (IS) front of the event under investigation is expected to impact the magnetopause at 15:38 UT (~ 57 min after WIND observations) first in the pre-noon region
Summary
The coupling among the solar wind (SW), the magnetosphere and the ionosphere represents an important subject of scientific interest, in particular in the Space Weather context In this process, the SW transfers energy to the magnetosphere by means of two principal mechanisms: the magnetic reconnection at the magnetopause in the dayside region [originally proposed by Dungey (1961)] and the viscous-like interaction generated by micro- or macro-instabilities [as suggested by Axford and. Concerning the ionosphere, its perturbations due to an increased dissipation of the solar wind energy represent still a challenging topic These disturbances, called ionospheric storms, affect significantly the global morphology of the ionosphere and represent an important feature of the complex dynamics characterizing the solar–terrestrial relations. In spite of the significant effort done so far to study ionospheric storms (Prölss 1995; Buonsanto 1999; Förster and Jakowski 2000; Mendillo 2006; Alfonsi et al 2013; Borries et al 2015; Cesaroni et al 2017; Spogli et al 2016; Greer et al 2017; Habarulema et al 2017; Heine et al 2017), many features remain poorly understood as well as there are still many open questions, which testifies the complexity of the phenomenon
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