Magnetospheric Substorms and Solar Flares

Akasofu, S. I., Magnetospheric Substorms and Solar Flares, Sol. Phys., 64, 333-348 (1979) (ADS)

The cartoon

(click on the image for a larger version)

There are striking similarities, and yet intriguing discrepancies, in comparisons of the morphology of solar flares and auroral substorms. Certainly some common physics must operate somehow. Alas, a common theoretical language has never really been widely adopted, and it's more than just figuring out (x,y,z). The essential problem is that the magnetospheric physicists prefer to discuss currents, EMFs, particle distribution functions, and waves, all of which they can more or less observe in-situ. By contrast the solar people, until recently, have been mired in ideal MHD and still, even at the time of writing of this page almost three decades later, draw essentially 2D cartoons. Note please the little pluses and minuses in this cartoon; these could not appear in a single-fluid treatment.

Date: 2007 March 16

Update: 2019 February 09