SM13C-2523
Controls of Earth's dipole tilt angle and background magnetosheath flow to the locations of reconnection sites on the magnetopasue
Monday, 14 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Changbo Zhu1, Hui Zhang2, Yasong Ge3, Zuyin Pu4, Wen Long Liu5, Libo Liu3, Weixing Wan3, Huijun Le3, Yiding Chen3 and Yong Fu Wang4, (1)CAS Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijng, China, (2)Institute Geology & Geophysics, Beijing, China, (3)IGG Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, (4)Peking University, Beijing, China, (5)Beihang University, School of Astronautics, Beijing, China
Abstract:
Plasma energy-dispersion properties inside reconnection jet flows observed in the low latitude boundary layer are used to determine the distances of the observing satellites to reconnection sites. The locations of the reconnection sites are then retrieved by tracing the modeled field lines by those distances. The controlling effects of the dipole tilt angle to the location of X-lines or reconnection sites are investigated. Our results show that the Earth's dipole tilt angles strongly modify the location of X-lines predicted by Cooling et al's model, which is thought to be the result of magnetopause reshaping due to finite dipole tilt angles. By investigating the magnetosheath flow outside the reconnection sites, we found that besides the dipole tilt angle the magnetosheath background flows also play a significant role in determining the locations of the reconnection sites.
