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The Possible Cause of Most Intense Geomagnetic Superstorm of the 21st Century on 20 November 2003

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Abstract

An extreme geomagnetic storm has the potential to affect various technologies and activities in space and on the ground, e.g., power grids, oil and gas industries, communications, ground transportation, satellite infrastructure, global navigation satellite systems, aviation, etc. Therefore, it is considered a major source of risk by various governmental agencies and corporations at the international level. All notable space weather events (superstorms) are caused by interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs). But not every ICME leads to an extreme storm. Moreover, how does an extreme storm form? Or which explicit characteristic of ICME actually is responsible for inducing a superstorm? Here, we re-investigate the ICME characteristics that contribute to the most intense storm of the current century that occurred on 20 November 2003. Interestingly, the studied ICME magnetic cloud shows characteristics of extremely flattened (pancaked) structure i.e. quasi-planar magnetic structure (PMS). The pancaked ICME shows less adiabatic expansion than usual in the compressed direction, which leads to strong magnetic field strength, high plasma density, high solar wind speed, high dynamic pressure, and a high eastward interplanetary electric field. Here, we propose that the ICME that transformed into a quasi-PMS has the aforementioned enhanced features with strong southward magnetic field component that contributes to efficiently transferring plasma and energy into the Earth’s magnetosphere to cause the observed superstorm.

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Data Availability

The utilized data in this analysis is taken from Wind spacecraft. The Wind data are publicly available at (1) NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) https://wind.nasa.gov/data.php, and (2) Coordinated Data Analysis Web (CDAWeb) https://cdaweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/data/wind/.

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Acknowledgment

We acknowledge use of NASA/GSFC’s Space Physics Data Facility’s OMNIWeb (or CDAWeb or ftp) service. We also thank the SOHO team for their remotely accessible data. This paper uses data from the Heliospheric Shock Database, generated and maintained at the University of Helsinki. We acknowledge SERB, India, since Anil Raghav is supported by SERB project reference file number CRG/2020/002314.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Mumbai, Vidyanagari, Santacruz (E), Mumbai, 400098, India

    Anil Raghav, Omkar Dhamane, Kalpesh Ghag & Prathmesh Tari

  2. Indian Institute of Geomagnetism (IIG), Kalamboli, New Panvel, Navi Mumbai, 410218, India

    Zubair Shaikh

  3. Indian Institute of Astrophysics, II Block, Koramangala, Bengaluru, 560034, India

    P. Vemareddy

  4. Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, 695022, India

    Ankush Bhaskar

  5. Department of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, College of Arts and Science, University of Nizwa, Nizwa, Oman

    Baiju Dayanandan & Badar Mohammed Al Suti

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  1. Anil Raghav
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AR proposed the project. ZS investigated the data in detail. AB, KG, OD, helped with the analysis. PV helps in the model analysis. AR, and ZS wrote the first draft after several discussions. AB, PV, and BD suggested corrections and improved the draft. Finally, all authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Anil Raghav.

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Raghav, A., Shaikh, Z., Vemareddy, P. et al. The Possible Cause of Most Intense Geomagnetic Superstorm of the 21st Century on 20 November 2003. Sol Phys 298, 64 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-023-02157-y

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