What time does the recovery phase of geomagnetic storms start: A superposed epoch analysis

Abstract:

It is well known that the recovery phase of the geomagnetic storms start during Dst reaches a minimum. This present paper is a discussion of recovery phase onset of a superposed epoch analysis of 247 storm events (-450 < Dst < -50 nT). The data of the solar wind parameters, the geomagnetic index AE and Dst are by means of 1 hour OMNI database. The energy budget for the driver and decay terms introduced by Burton et al. (1975) are checked. As might be expected, the recovery phase of geomagnetic storms starts when the decay term is greater than the driver term. The balance of the decay and driver terms is also dependent on the solar wind energy input during the initial phase. In general, at the onset of the recovery phase, E_K-L decreases to 70% of a maximum of E_K-L.