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Pressure gradient evolution in the near-Earth magnetotail at the arrival of BBFs

  • Article
  • Geophysics
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Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

Using in situ observations from THEMIS A, D and E during the 2008–2011 tail season, we present a statistical study of the evolution of pressure gradients in the near-Earth tail during bursty bulk flow (BBF) convection. We identified 138 substorm BBFs and 2,197 non-substorm BBFs for this study. We found that both the pressure and the B Z component of the magnetic field were enhanced at the arrival of BBFs at the spacecraft locations. We suggest that the increase of B Z during non-substorm BBFs is associated with flux pile-up. However, the much stronger enhancement of B Z during substorm BBFs implies the occurrence of magnetic field dipolarization which is caused by both the flux pile-up process and near-Earth current disruption. Furthermore, a bow-wave-like high pressure appears to be formed at the arrival of substorm BBFs, which is responsible for the formation of region-1-sense FACs. The azimuthal pressure gradient associated with the arrival of substorm BBFs lasts for about 5 min. The enhanced pressure gradient associated with the bow wave is caused by the braking and diversion of the Earthward flow in the inner plasma sheet. The results from this statistical study suggest that the braking and azimuthal diversion of BBFs may commonly create azimuthal pressure gradients, which are related to the formation of the FAC of the substorm current wedge.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2014CB845903, 2012CB825604), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41211120176, 41274167, 41031065, 41374166, 41330104, 41374171), the National R&D Projects for Key Scientific Instruments (ZDYZ2012-1-01), UK Science and Technology Facilities Council grant (ST/L005638/1) at UCL/MSSL, and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2014M550826).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Earth and Planetary Physics, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Zhonghua Yao, Aimin Du, Xin Cao & Yuan Wang

  2. Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL, Dorking, RH5 6NT, UK

    Zhonghua Yao & Christopher J. Owen

  3. School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Zhonghua Yao, Zuyin Pu, Suiyan Fu & Qiugang Zong

  4. Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences and Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1567, USA

    Vassilis Angelopoulos, Jiang Liu & Xiangning Chu

Authors
  1. Zhonghua Yao
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  2. Zuyin Pu
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  3. Aimin Du
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  4. Vassilis Angelopoulos
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  5. Christopher J. Owen
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  6. Jiang Liu
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  7. Xiangning Chu
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  8. Xin Cao
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  9. Suiyan Fu
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  10. Qiugang Zong
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  11. Yuan Wang
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Correspondence to Zhonghua Yao.

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Yao, Z., Pu, Z., Du, A. et al. Pressure gradient evolution in the near-Earth magnetotail at the arrival of BBFs. Chin. Sci. Bull. 59, 4804–4808 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0618-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0618-6

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