Articles | Volume 38, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-38-191-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-38-191-2020
Regular paper
 | 
07 Feb 2020
Regular paper |  | 07 Feb 2020

Swarm field-aligned currents during a severe magnetic storm of September 2017

Renata Lukianova

Data sets

ESA Swarm Data Access, Level 2 daily ESA https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/swarm/data-access

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Short summary
During the most intense storm of solar cycle 24, the magnetosphere–ionosphere interaction, which is primarily associated with field-aligned currents (FACs), was much stronger than usual. Measurements onboard the low-latitude polar-orbiting Swarm satellites have shown that the intensities of FACs increase dramatically during the storm-time substorms. The extreme values of 1 s (7.5 km width) FACs reach 80 μA m−2. The lowest latitude of the FAC region is limited to 49–50 MLat.