Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > The differences between storms driven by helmet...

Associated organisational unit

Electronic data

  • jgra50524

    Rights statement: ©2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.

    Final published version, 3.07 MB, PDF document

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

The differences between storms driven by helmet streamer CIRs and storms driven by pseudostreamer CIRs

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
Close
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>09/2013
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Geophysical Research
Issue number9
Volume118
Number of pages16
Pages (from-to)5506-5521
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date6/09/13
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

A corotating interaction region (CIR) is formed when fast coronal hole origin solar wind overtakes slow solar wind and forms a region of compressed plasma and magnetic field. The slow wind upstream of the coronal hole fast wind can be either of helmet streamer origin or pseudostreamer origin. For a collection of 125 CIR-driven geomagnetic storms, the slow wind ahead of each CIR is examined; for those storm not containing ejecta, each CIR is categorized as a helmet streamer CIR (74 of the 125 storms) or a pseudostreamer CIR (11 of the 125 storms). Separate superposed epoch studies are performed on the two groups to discern the differences between storms driven by pseudostreamer CIRs and those driven by helmet streamer CIRs. A major difference is that pseudostreamer CIR storms tend not to have a calm before the storm, so the outer plasmasphere does not refill before storm onset, and the outer electron radiation belt does not exhibit a pre-storm decay. The superdense plasma sheet is weaker for pseudostreamer CIR storms, and the dropout of the electron radiation belt is weaker. Pseudostreamer CIR storms and helmet streamer CIR storms tend to be of the same strength as measured by the magnitude of Kp, MBI (midnight boundary index), or Dst.

Bibliographic note

©2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.