Fig. 8From: Reconnection and interchange instability in the near magnetotailComparison between 2-D and 3-D MHD simulations. Variation of a the reconnected flux, b the kinetic energy as function of time, obtained from the 3-D MHD simulation (Birn et al. 2011) and from a 2-D simulation that starts with the 3-D fields in the plane y=0 at t=t 0=61. The 3-D results are evaluated in a 2-D fashion, averaging for |y|<1.5R E Back to article page