Speaker
Description
The solar wind (SW), as a primary space weather driver, exhibits significant temporal and spatial variations in the properties of heliospheric plasma. The mass, energy, and flux transfer from the SW to Earth's magnetosphere and upper atmosphere occurs through strong coupling between the magnetosphere and ionosphere, primarily mediated by field-aligned current (FAC) systems. Earth’s coupled magnetosphere–ionosphere (MI) system forms a complex electrodynamic environment, where multiple current systems arise from different magnetospheric regions through distinct physical mechanisms like magnetic reconnection and viscous interaction. Studies combining in-situ Sun-Earth L1 observations with ground-based geomagnetic data reveal that the SW pressure enhancement has a significant effect on Earth's ionospheric electrodynamics. However, the understanding of the global ionospheric effects of such transient SW remains unclear and requires comprehensive physics-based modeling.
We conducted global MHD simulations across both the heliospheric and magnetospheric domains using a steady solar wind background. A temporally localized disturbance in dynamic pressure, caused by a density enhancement, was introduced under three different IMF clock angle conditions. To investigate the effects of the SW disturbance on the FACs and ionospheric convection cells, we used a two-way MI coupling module named MagPIE, which solves the ionospheric shell potential with the input of parallel current densities from the MHD domain and relevant height-integrated conductances. We observed significant changes in the FAC profile and intensities for the density enhancement for various IMF scenarios, along with a secular response in the magnetosphere. Moreover, our study also demonstrates that the efficiency of the pressure pulse in penetrating the ionosphere depends crucially on the IMF B_y component. In this presentation, I shall analyse the variations in field-aligned currents (FACs) and convection cells induced by solar wind disturbances and compare them under different IMF conditions. Additionally, I will describe the computational setup, which is supported by the magnetosphere–ionosphere (MI) coupling module, MagPIE.
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