Storm time dynamics of ring current protons: Implications for the long-term energy budget in the inner magnetosphere

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Abstract

Our investigation of the long-term ring current proton pressure evolution in Earth's inner magnetosphere based on Van Allen Probes data shows drastically different behavior of the low- and high- energy components of the ring current proton population with respect to the SYM-H index variation. We found that while the low-energy component of the protons (<80 keV) is strongly governed by convective timescales and is very well correlated with the absolute value of SYM-H index, the high-energy component (>100 keV) varies on much longer timescales and shows either no correlation or anticorrelation with the absolute value of SYM-H index. Our study also shows that the contributions of the low- and high- energy protons to the inner magnetosphere energy content are comparable. Thus, our results conclusively demonstrate that proton dynamics, and as a result the energy budget in the inner magnetosphere, do not vary strictly on storm time timescales as those are defined by the SYM-H index.

Identifier

84971283905 (Scopus)

Publication Title

Geophysical Research Letters

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL068013

e-ISSN

19448007

ISSN

00948276

First Page

4736

Last Page

4744

Issue

10

Volume

43

Grant

1303646

Fund Ref

National Science Foundation

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