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JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 111, A07S09, doi:10.1029/2005JA011476, 2006

Major geomagnetic storms (Dst ≤ −100 nT) generated by corotating interaction regions

I. G. Richardson

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA


D. F. Webb

Institute for Scientific Research, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA


J. Zhang

School of Computational Sciences, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA


D. B. Berdichevsky

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
L-3 Government Services Inc., Chantilly, Virginia, USA


D. A. Biesecker

NOAA Space Environment Center, Boulder, Colorado, USA


J. C. Kasper

Center for Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA


R. Kataoka

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA


J. T. Steinberg

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA


B. J. Thompson

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA


C.-C. Wu

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, Alabama, USA


A. N. Zhukov

Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium
Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia


Abstract

Seventy-nine major geomagnetic storms (minimum Dst ≤ −100 nT) observed in 1996 to 2004 were the focus of a “Living with a Star” Coordinated Data Analysis Workshop (CDAW) in March 2005. In nine cases, the storm driver appears to have been purely a corotating interaction region (CIR) without any contribution from coronal mass ejection-related material (interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs)). These storms were generated by structures within CIRs located both before and/or after the stream interface that included persistently southward magnetic fields for intervals of several hours. We compare their geomagnetic effects with those of 159 CIRs observed during 1996–2005. The major storms form the extreme tail of a continuous distribution of CIR geoeffectiveness which peaks at Dst ∼ −40 nT but is subject to a prominent seasonal variation of ∼40 nT which is ordered by the spring and fall equinoxes and the solar wind magnetic field direction toward or away from the Sun. The O'Brien and McPherron (2000) equations, which estimate Dst by integrating the incident solar wind electric field and incorporating a ring current loss term, largely account for the variation in storm size. They tend to underestimate the size of the larger CIR-associated storms by Dst ∼ 20 nT. This suggests that injection into the ring current may be more efficient than expected in such storms. Four of the nine major storms in 1996–2004 occurred during a period of less than three solar rotations in September to November 2002, also the time of maximum mean IMF and solar magnetic field intensity during the current solar cycle. The maximum CIR-storm strength found in our sample of events, plus additional 23 probable CIR-associated Dst ≤ −100 nT storms in 1972–1995, is (Dst = −161 nT). This is consistent with the maximum storm strength (Dst ∼ −180 nT) expected from the O'Brien and McPherron equations for the typical range of solar wind electric fields associated with CIRs. This suggests that CIRs alone are unlikely to generate geomagnetic storms that exceed these levels.

Received 17 October 2005; accepted 21 March 2006; published 26 May 2006.

Keywords: AL index; auroral electrojet; polar cap.

Index Terms: 2102 Interplanetary Physics: Corotating streams; 2134 Interplanetary Physics: Interplanetary magnetic fields; 2164 Interplanetary Physics: Solar wind plasma; 2788 Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetic storms and substorms (7954).

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Citation: Richardson, I. G., et al. (2006), Major geomagnetic storms (Dst ≤ −100 nT) generated by corotating interaction regions, J. Geophys. Res., 111, A07S09, doi:10.1029/2005JA011476.