Response of the Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere to solar wind driver and ionosphere load: Results of global MHD simulations

TL;DR

This study uses global MHD simulations to analyze how solar wind conditions and ionosphere load influence magnetospheric and ionospheric responses, revealing monotonic and non-monotonic behaviors of currents and potentials.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the dependence of magnetospheric reconnection and ionospheric currents on solar wind parameters and ionosphere conductance using comprehensive 3D simulations.

Findings

Reconnection voltage and transpolar potential increase with southward IMF, solar wind speed, and decreasing Pedersen conductance.

Region 1 and 2 FACs increase with southward IMF and solar wind speed, but respond differently to ionosphere conductance.

Region 2 FAC shows non-monotonic response to Pedersen conductance, first increasing then decreasing.

Abstract

Three-dimensional global magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the solar wind - magnetosphere - ionosphere system are carried out to explore the dependence of the magnetospheric reconnection voltage, the ionospheric transpolar potential, and the field aligned currents (FACs) on the solar wind driver and ionosphere load for the cases with pure southward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). It is shown that the reconnection voltage and the transpolar potential increase monotonically with decreasing Pedersen conductance ($\Sigma_{\rm P}$), increasing southward IMF strength ($B_{\rm s}$) and solar wind speed ($v_{\rm sw}$). Moreover, both of the region 1 and the region 2 FACs increase when $B_{\rm s}$ and $v_{\rm sw}$ increase, whereas the two currents behave differently in response to $\Sigma_{\rm P}$. As $\Sigma_{\rm P}$ increases, the region 1 FAC increases monotonically, but the region 2 FAC shows a non-monotonic response to the increase of $\Sigma_{\rm P}$: it first increases in the range of (0, 5) Siemens and then decreases for $\Sigma_P >$ 5 Siemens.