During magnetic storms the magnetic disturbance at low latitudes becomes asymmetric, enhanced in the evening sector and reduced around morning. This has been attributed to the asymmetric ring current. Here a new 3D current system is proposed for explaining the asymmetric signal. Anti-sunward net currents at high latitude are connected at their noon and night ends to field-aligned currents that lead the currents to the magnetopause on the dawn and dusk flanks where the current closure occurs.

Extreme meteorological events such as SSWs induce variabilities in the ionosphere by modulating the atmospheric tides, and these variabilities can be comparable to a moderate geomagnetic storm. The equatorial electrojet (EEJ) is a narrow ribbon of current flowing over the dip equator in the ionosphere and is particularly sensitive to tidal changes. In this study, we use ground-magnetic measurements to investigate the semidiurnal solar and lunar tidal variabilities of the EEJ during SSWs.

This paper presents a statistical study of the equatorward boundary of small-scale field-aligned currents (SSFACs) as observed by ESA's Swarm satellites and investigates the relation between this boundary and NASA’s Van Allen probe observed plasmapause (PP). It is found that the two boundaries are closely coincident in the midnight LT sector, where the new PP is formed. Our results point to the role of SSFACs in the creation of the PP and offer a unique tool to monitor PP dynamics.

This is the first study considering ionospheric currents (both field-aligned current and Hall current) derived from high-resolution magnetic field data of the Swarm constellation in both hemispheres. The prominent auroral electrojets are found to be closely controlled by the solar wind input, but we find no dependence of their intensity on the IMF B_y orientation. An important finding is that all the IMF B_y dependences of FACs and Hall currents practically disappear in the dark winter hemisphere.