Solar Eclipses May Initiate Disturbances in Geospace – GWC Mag

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.

Source: Geophysical Research Letters

A geomagnetic substorm is a disturbance occurring in the Earth’s magnetosphere, involving a sudden release of energy through the coupling between the solar wind and Earth’s near-space environment via electrodynamical forces. Although this phenomenon has been studied for a long time, the mechanism triggering substorms remains a hot research topic.

Using 21 years of data, Coyle et al. [2023] investigate the mutual dependence between substorms and solar eclipses. They demonstrate that the probability of co-occurrence between a substorm and a solar eclipse is higher than random chance. This result suggests that a solar eclipse may trigger a substorm.

While further studies are needed, the reduction of ionospheric electron density in the shadow region during solar eclipses may influence the conditions for substorm initiation in the magnetosphere.

Citation: Coyle, S. E., Baker, J. B. H., Chakraborty, S., Hartinger, M. D., Freeman, M. P., Clauer, C. R., et al. (2023). Substorms and solar eclipses: A mutual information based study. Geophysical Research Letters, 50, e2023GL106432. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL106432

—Yuichi Otsuka, Editor, Geophysical Research Letters

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