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A rendering of the magnetic field lines of the magnetosphere of the Earth.. In astronomy and planetary science, a magnetosphere is a region of space surrounding an astronomical object in which charged particles are affected by that object's magnetic field.
A geomagnetic storm, also known as a magnetic storm, is a temporary disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere caused by a solar wind shock wave. The disturbance that drives the magnetic storm may be a solar coronal mass ejection (CME) or (much less severely) a corotating interaction region (CIR), a high-speed stream of solar wind originating ...
The plasmasphere, or inner magnetosphere, is a region of the Earth's magnetosphere consisting of low-energy (cool) plasma.It is located above the ionosphere.The outer boundary of the plasmasphere is known as the plasmapause, which is defined by an order of magnitude drop in plasma density.
(This simple definition assumes a noon-midnight plane of symmetry, but closed fields lacking such symmetry also must have cusps, by the fixed point theorem.) The amount of solar wind energy and plasma entering the actual magnetosphere depends on how far it departs from such a "closed" configuration, i.e. the extent to which Interplanetary ...
The largest magnetospheric-ionospheric current variations, resulting in the largest external magnetic field variations, occur during geomagnetic storms and it is then that the largest GIC occur. Significant variation periods are typically from seconds to about an hour, so the induction process involves the upper mantle and lithosphere .
A substorm, sometimes referred to as a magnetospheric substorm or an auroral substorm, is a brief disturbance in the Earth's magnetosphere that causes energy to be released from the "tail" of the magnetosphere and injected into the high latitude ionosphere.
Venus and Mars do not have radiation belts, as their magnetospheric configurations do not trap energetic charged particles in orbit around the planet. Geomagnetic storms can cause electron density to increase or decrease relatively quickly (i.e., approximately one day or less). Longer-timescale processes determine the overall configuration of ...
Earth's ring current is responsible for shielding the lower latitudes of the Earth from magnetospheric electric fields. It therefore has a large effect on the electrodynamics of geomagnetic storms . The ring current system consists of a band, at a distance of 3 to 8 R E , [ 1 ] which lies in the equatorial plane and circulates clockwise around ...