Upstream drivers of poleward moving auroral forms by satellite-imager coordinated observations

Abstract:

Poleward moving auroral forms (PMAFs) are observed near the dayside poleward auroral oval boundary. PMAFs are thought to be an ionospheric signature of dayside reconnection and flux transfer events. PMAFs tend to occur when the IMF is southward. Although a limited number of PMAFs has been found in association with IMF southward turning, events without appreciable changes in IMF have also been reported. While those PMAFs could be triggered spontaneously, many of the past studies used solar wind measurements far away from the bow shock nose and may have used inaccurate time shift or missed small-scale structures in the solar wind. To examine how often PMAFs are triggered by upstream structures using solar wind measurements close to the bow shock nose, we use the AGO all sky imager in Antarctic and THEMIS B and C satellites in 2008, 2009 and 2011. We identified 24 conjunction events, where at least one of the THEMIS satellites is in the solar wind and the AGO imager is located within 3 MLT from the THEMIS MLT. We found that, in 14 out of 24 conjunction events, PMAFs occur soon after IMF southward turning, indicating that IMF southward turning could be the major triggering of PMAFs. Interestingly, among these 14 cases, there are 7 cases with different IMF structures between THEMIS B/C and OMNI, which obtained IMF information from WIND and ACE. And the larger correlation coefficients between PMAFs and IMFs observed by THMEIS B/C than OMNI present the advantages of THEMIS B/C. Among the 10 cases without correlating with IMF structures, PMAFs in two events are shown to have good correlation with reflected ions in the foreshock. Based on all the conjunction events we identified, IMF southward turning is the major trigger of PMAFs and reflected ions have minor effects. The rest of the cases could be spontaneous PMAFs, although foreshock activities, even if exists, may be missed due to the IMF orientation.