Substorm Evolution in the Near-Earth Plasma Sheet

Abstract

This grant represented one-year, phase-out funding for the project of the same name (NAG5-9110 to Boston University) to determine precursors and signatures of local substorm onset and how they evolve in the plasma sheet using the Geotail near-Earth database. We report here on two accomplishments: (1) Completion of an examination of plasma velocity signature at times of local onsets in the current disruption (CD) region. (2) Initial investigation into quantification of near-Earth flux-tube contents of injected plasma at times of substorm injections.