HR: 11:50h
AN: SM42A-07    [Abstracts]
TI: A Statistical Test of the Assumptions Used to Form a Minimal Substorm Model.
AU: Freeman, M P
EM: mpf@bas.ac.uk
AF: British Antarctic Survey, High Cross Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET United Kingdom
AU: * Abel, G A
EM: gaab@bas.ac.uk
AF: British Antarctic Survey, High Cross Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET United Kingdom
AU: Smith, A J
EM: ajsm
AF: British Antarctic Survey, High Cross Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET United Kingdom
AB: A minimal model for the evolution of the global dynamical state of the magnetotail during the substorm, involving only three simple rules has been developed. The model considers the general state of the magnetospheric system rather than concentrate on the physical nature of the substorm instability. When driven by a real solar wind power input, the minimal substorm model produces a probability distribution of times between substorm onsets that compares favourably with the distribution of 1001 inter-substorm intervals found by Borovsky et al. from observation. In this paper we examine the validity of the assumptions behind the model, specifically that the integrated solar wind input between two contiguous substorm onsets is proportional to the solar wind input at the time of the first substorm. We do this by comparing the integrated solar wind input between pairs of substorm onsets with the solar wind input at the time of the first substorm onset for a set of observed substorm pairs.
DE: 2784 Solar wind/magnetosphere interactions
DE: 2788 Storms and substorms
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting