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Responses of field-aligned currents and equatorial electrojet to sudden decrease of solar wind dynamic pressure during the March 2023 geomagnetic storm
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  • Guan Le,
  • Guiping Liu,
  • Endawoke Yizengaw,
  • Chin-Chun Wu,
  • Yihua Zheng,
  • Sarah Kimberly Vines,
  • Natalia Buzulukova
Guan Le
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Guiping Liu
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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Endawoke Yizengaw
The Aerospace Corporation
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Chin-Chun Wu
Naval Research Laboratory
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Yihua Zheng
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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Sarah Kimberly Vines
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
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Natalia Buzulukova
UMCP/NASA GSFC
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Abstract

We present a study of the magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling during the 23 March 2023 magnetic storm, focusing on the effect of the drastic decrease of the solar wind dynamic pressure occurred during the main phase. Our observations show that the negative pressure pulse had significant impact to the magnetosphere-ionosphere system. It weakened large-scale field-aligned currents and paused the progression of the storm main phase for ~3 hrs. Due to the sudden decrease of the plasma convection after the negative pressure pulse, the low-latitude ionosphere was over-shielded and experienced a brief period of westward penetration electric field, which reversed the direction of the equatorial electrojet. The counter electrojet was observed both in space and on the ground. A transient, localized enhancement of downward field-aligned current was observed near dawn, consistent with the mechanism for transmitting MHD disturbances from magnetosphere to the ionosphere after the negative pressure pulse.
26 Apr 2024Submitted to ESS Open Archive
26 Apr 2024Published in ESS Open Archive