The May 2024 Storm: dayside magnetopause and cusps in simulated soft X-Rays

TL;DR

This study simulates soft X-Ray emissions during the May 2024 geomagnetic storm to visualize magnetopause and cusp dynamics, revealing how X-Ray imaging can monitor space weather phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation method for soft X-Ray imaging of magnetospheric boundaries during intense geomagnetic storms, highlighting potential for future space weather diagnostics.

Findings

Magnetopause moves inward to ~4 RE during storm

Cusp emission ridges appear as parallel X-Ray features

Cusp ridges shift to higher latitudes after magnetic reversal

Abstract

The coronal mass ejection (CME) arriving at Earth on May 10, 2024 caused the most intense geomagnetic storm in the last two decades, and resulted in highly unusual magnetopause and cusp dynamics. We simulate soft X-Ray emission due to solar wind charge exchange with exospheric neutrals to image the global dayside dynamics, focusing on the impact of a dense CME current sheet during the storm main phase. The magnetopause moves inward to ~ 4 RE, and at the same time, the two cusps manifest as nearly parallel emission ridges in X-Ray. As the interplanetary magnetic field reverses, the cusp ridges move to higher latitudes for ~ 10 minutes after the reversal. The X-Ray emission can be detected by imagers to be flown on future missions to provide a global picture of the magnetopause and cusps with quantitative determination of their locations