Abstract
The injection of energy into the Earth’s magnetosphere during geomagnetic storms and substorms has a direct impact on the ionosphere in the auroral and sub-auroral regions. This influence can be observed through phenomena such as the expansion of the auroral oval, and fluctuations in plasma density and the intensity of the field-aligned current (FAC) system. Changes in the geomagnetic environment significantly affect the main ionospheric trough (MIT) and field-aligned currents (FACs). In this study, we analysed two geomagnetic storms of different origins—October 2015 and September 2017 that occurred during solar cycle 24. Both storms were characterised by two minima of the Dst index and classified as two-step storms. In this work, we investigate the evolution of FACs density, the displacement of MIT and FACs during the development of geomagnetic storms, and we quest for the relationship between field-aligned currents and the main ionospheric trough. We noticed a connection between the positions of the main ionospheric trough minima and the Dst index, found cases especially during the main and recovery phase of the storms when FACs increase after leaving the ionospheric trough, and observed the predominance of downward currents in the area of the MIT which suggest their influence on the formation of this region of depleted plasma density.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the Swarm Science Team for providing the Level 2 data, the Swarm visualisation tool (https://vires.services/), the Virtual Research Environment ("VRE"), and the PRISM product.
The Dst index used in this paper was provided by the WDC for Geomagnetism, Kyoto (http://wdc.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/wdc/Sec3.html).
Data from the DMSP satellites are kindly provided by Patricia Doherty and were downloaded from the CEDAR Madrigal Database (http://cedar.openmadrigal.org/).
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Chuchra-Konrad, A., Matyjasiak, B., Przepiórka-Skup, D. et al. Main ionospheric trough and field-aligned currents’ responses to the geomagnetic storms in October 2015 and September 2017. Acta Geophys. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-024-01304-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-024-01304-8