Global geomagnetic responses to the IMF B_z fluctuations during the September/October 2003 high-speed stream intervals

Abstract. In this paper, we follow the coupling from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetotail, geosynchronous orbit, auroral zone and to the ground, during periods of Alfvénic fluctuations in high-speed solar wind streams (HSSs) and their corotating interaction regions (CIRs). We employ cross-wavelet analysis of magnetic field, particle flux and auroral electrojet (AE) index data for the HSSs of September and October 2003. Our results show a remarkably consistent periodic response among all of these regions and across multiple substorm indicators, indicating a possible driven substorm response of the global magnetosphere to the solar wind interplanetary structures. Across the seven intervals studied we find a range of periodic responses from 1.8 to 3.1 h, which is consistent with the 2.75 h peak of the Borovsky et al. (1993) statistical study of inter-substorm periods.