Low Latitude Pulsations Associated with Different Phases of Geomagnetic Storms

Abstract:

During geomagnetic storm lot of free energy is available in the magnetosphere and this energy can act as feeder to electromagnetic waves in different frequency bands. A classical geomagnetic storm consists mainly of four phases i.e. SSC (Sudden Storm commencement), initial Phase, main phase and recovery phase. In this paper, we investigate the characteristics of electromagnetic waves in ULF (ultra low frequency) band associated with different phases of geomagnetic storms. Electromagnetic waves in ULF band (Period~ 10-100s) in the Earth's magnetosphere are generally termed as geomagnetic pulsations. A detailed statistical analysis has been performed over ten years of geomagnetic data from low latitude ground stations in Indian and Japanese sectors. The study reveals that storms in general, are accompanied with continuous pulsations of different frequency bands during different phases. In particular, the main phase of 91 % of intense storms was accompanied with pulsations in Pc5 band (frequency~ 2-7 mHz). However, the occurrence of these pulsations was less frequent during main phase of weak to moderate storms. Further, the amplitude of these pulsations increased with the intensity of storm.