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Low and Midlatitude Ionospheric Plasma Density Irregularities and Their Effects on Geomagnetic Field

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Abstract

Earth’s magnetic field results from various internal and external sources. The electric currents in the ionosphere are major external sources of the magnetic field in the daytime. High-resolution magnetometers onboard low-Earth-orbit satellites such as CHAMP and Swarm can detect small-scale currents in the nighttime ionosphere, where plasma density gradients often become unstable and form irregular density structures. The magnetic field variations caused by the ionospheric irregularities are comparable to that of the lithospheric contribution. Two phenomena in the nighttime ionosphere that contribute to the magnetic field variation are presented: equatorial plasma bubble (EPB) and medium-scale traveling ionospheric disturbance (MSTID). EPB is formed by the generalized Rayleigh–Taylor instability over the dip equator and grows nonlinearly to as high as 2000 km apex altitude. It is characterized by deep plasma density depletions along magnetic flux tubes, where the diamagnetic effect produced by a pressure-gradient-driven current enhances the main field intensity. MSTID is a few hundred kilometer-scale disturbance in the midlatitude ionosphere generated by the coupled electrodynamics between the ionospheric \(E\) and \(F\) regions. The field-aligned currents associated with EPBs and MSTIDs also have significant signatures in the magnetic field perpendicular to the main field direction. The empirical discovery of the variations in the magnetic field due to plasma irregularities has motivated the inclusion of electrodynamics in the physical modeling of these irregularities. Through an effective comparison between the model results and observations, the physical process involved has been largely understood. The prediction of magnetic signatures due to plasma irregularities has been advanced by modeling studies, and will be helpful in interpreting magnetic field observations from satellites.

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the International Space Science Institute Bern for hosting the Workshop on “Earth’s Magnetic Field” held in Bern in May 2015. CHAMP satellite observations are available from the GFZ’s data center (http://isdc.gfz-potsdam.de). Swarm observations are provided by ESA on http://earth.esa.int/swarm. Ingo Michaelis and Jan Rauberg assisted in deriving the residuals between Swarm observations and magnetic field models. This work was supported by the computational joint research program of the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research (ISEE), Nagoya University, Japan. The simulation was also performed by using Hitachi SR16000/M1 at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Japan. Simulation results are available upon request to the author (TY).

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  1. National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, 4-2-1 Nukui-Kitamachi, Koganei, Tokyo, 184-8795, Japan

    Tatsuhiro Yokoyama

  2. Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum, Telegrafenberg, 14473, Potsdam, Germany

    Claudia Stolle

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  1. Tatsuhiro Yokoyama
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  2. Claudia Stolle
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Correspondence to Tatsuhiro Yokoyama.

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Yokoyama, T., Stolle, C. Low and Midlatitude Ionospheric Plasma Density Irregularities and Their Effects on Geomagnetic Field. Space Sci Rev 206, 495–519 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-016-0295-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-016-0295-7

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