Dayside Transient Phenomena and Their Impact on the Magnetosphere and Ionosphere

Dayside transients, such as hot flow anomalies, foreshock bubbles, magnetosheath jets, flux transfer events, and surface waves, are frequently observed upstream from the bow shock, in the magnetosheath, and at the magnetopause. They play a significant role in the solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling. Foreshock transient phenomena, associated with variations in the solar wind dynamic pressure, deform the magnetopause, and in turn generates field-aligned currents (FACs) connected to the auroral ionosphere. Solar wind dynamic pressure variations and transient phenomena at the dayside magnetopause drive magnetospheric ultra low frequency (ULF) waves, which can play an important role in the dynamics of Earth's radiation belts. These transient phenomena and their geoeffects have been investigated using coordinated in-situ spacecraft observations, spacecraft-borne imagers, ground-based observations, and numerical simulations. Cluster, THEMIS, Geotail, and MMS multi-mission observations allow us to track the motion and time evolution of transient phenomena at different spatial and temporal scales in detail, whereas ground-based experiments can observe the ionospheric projections of transient magnetopause phenomena such as waves on the magnetopause driven by hot flow anomalies or flux transfer events produced by bursty reconnection across their full longitudinal and latitudinal extent. Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), hybrid, and particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are powerful tools to simulate the dayside transient phenomena. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the present understanding of dayside transient phenomena at Earth and other planets, their geoeffects, and outstanding questions.

Making Waves: Mirror Mode Structures Around Mars Observed by the MAVEN Spacecraft

We present an in-depth analysis of a time interval when quasi-linear mirror mode structures were detected by magnetic field and plasma measurements as observed by the NASA/Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN spacecraft. We employ ion and electron spectrometers in tandem to support the magnetic field measurements and confirm that the signatures are indeed mirror modes. Wedged against the magnetic pile-up boundary, the low-frequency signatures last on average∼ 10  s with corresponding sizes of the order of 15-30 upstream solar wind proton thermal gyroradii, or 10-20 proton gyroradii in the immediate wake of the quasi-perpendicular bow shock. Their peak-to-peak amplitudes are of the order of 30-35 nT with respect to the background field, and appear as a mixture of dips and peaks, suggesting that they may have been at different stages in their evolution. Situated in a marginally stable plasma with β ‖ ∼ 1, we hypothesize that these so-called magnetic bottles, containing a relatively higher energy and denser ion population with respect to the background plasma, are formed upstream of the spacecraft behind the quasi-perpendicular shock. These signatures are very reminiscent of magnetic bottles found at other unmagnetized objects such as Venus and comets, also interpreted as mirror modes. Our case study constitutes the first unmistakable identification and characterization of mirror modes at Mars from the joint points of view of magnetic field, electron and ion measurements. Up until now, the lack of high-temporal resolution plasma measurements has prevented such an in-depth study.

Compiling Magnetosheath Statistical Data Sets Under Specific Solar Wind Conditions: Lessons Learnt From the Dayside Kinetic Southward IMF GEM Challenge

The Geospace Environmental Modelling (GEM) community offers a framework for collaborations between modelers, observers, and theoreticians in the form of regular challenges. In many cases, these challenges involve model-data comparisons to provide wider context to observations or validate model results. To perform meaningful comparisons, a statistical approach is often adopted, which requires the extraction of a large number of measurements from a specific region. However, in complex regions such as the magnetosheath, compiling these data can be difficult. Here, we provide the statistical context of compiling statistical data for the southward IMF GEM challenge initiated by the "Dayside Kinetic Processes in Global Solar Wind-Magnetosphere Interaction" focus group. It is shown that matching very specific upstream conditions can severely impact the statistical data if limits are imposed on several solar wind parameters. We suggest that future studies that wish to compare simulations and/or single events to statistical data should carefully consider at an early stage the availability of data in context with the upstream criteria. We also demonstrate the importance of how specific IMF conditions are defined, the chosen spacecraft, the region of interest, and how regions are identified automatically. The lessons learnt in this study are of wide context to many future studies as well as GEM challenges. The results also highlight the issue where a global statistical perspective has to be balanced with its relevance to more-extreme, less-frequent individual events, which is typically the case in the field of space weather.