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Geomagnetic sudden commencement at the dawn-time dip equator

Earth, Planets and Space volume 60, pages 607–612 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Waveform of geomagnetic sudden commencement (SC) on the ground depends on both latitude and local time (LT). Using high-resolution (1 s) geomagnetic field measurements obtained at Jicamarca (JIC, MAGLAT = 0.0°) from 1998 to 2005, we examined the waveforms of 188 SC events and found that some of the SCs observed at nighttime (approx. 22-05 LT) and dawn time (approx. 05-07 LT) had a common observational feature, i.e., a positive impulse always appeared at the beginning of the main impulse of the SC, which led to these events show preliminary positive impulse (PPI) or ‘Stepwise’ structure in the waveforms. In particular, the occurrence rate of the PPI/Stepwise events at the dawn time was clearly higher than that at the nighttime. This is the first complete report of this observational feature for the SCs observed at the dip equator. Based on a comparison of our observations with the previously proposed model calculation of Kikuchi et al. (2001), we suggest that the PPI/Stepwise events observed at the dawn-time dip equator reflect the effects of the ionospheric currents (ICs) and field-aligned currents (FACs). We therefore argue that this observational result provides evidence for the validity of the model calculation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SOA Key Laboratory for Polar Science, Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai, China

    De-Sheng Han

  2. Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing, China

    Qi Li

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  1. De-Sheng Han
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Correspondence to De-Sheng Han.

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Han, DS., Li, Q. Geomagnetic sudden commencement at the dawn-time dip equator. Earth Planet Sp 60, 607–612 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03353124

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03353124

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