Study of Solar Wind and Interplanetary Magnetic Field Features
Associated with Geomagnetic Storms: The Cross Wavelet Approach
Abstract
Researchers have studied the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) and
solar-wind (SW) parameters that influence the development of geomagnetic
storms for more than a decade. This study utilised newly developed tools
for investigating the association between solar and interplanetary
plasma parameters along with geomagnetic (GM) indices during two
different geomagnetic storms of varying intensity that occurred on 20
November 2003 (SYM-H = -490 nT) and 22 June 2015 (SYM-H = -139 nT). As
the largest storm in Solar Cycle (SC)-23 and the second largest in
SC-24, these events were deliberately chosen to represent extreme space
weather activity. The study of these severe geomagnetic events provides
a unique opportunity to better understand the coupling nature between
the solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere system. Cross wavelet analysis
(XWT) exposes high common power regions between the solar wind velocity
(Vsw) and interplanetary magnetic field component (IMF-Bz), plasma
pressure (Psw), plasma density (Nsw), Geomagnetic Auroral Electrojet
(AE) index and Symmetrical Ring Current Index (SYM‐H). Another useful
tool is wavelet transform coherence (WTC), which we have applied to
measure how coherent the XWT is in time-frequency space. Thus, the local
correlation between two continuous wavelet transforms (CWTs) can be
conceived of as WTC. Moreover, we examined the relationship among the
solar wind parameters during storm events using detrended
cross-correlation analysis (DXA) with possible explanations. The study’s
findings will demonstrate that the suggested methods are a simple,
effective, and robust method for gaining deeper insight into the complex
spatiotemporal characteristics of time series.