An investigation into the spectral parameters of ultra-low-frequency (ULF) waves in the polar caps and magnetotail

Nosikova, Nataliya Sergeevna; Yagova, Nadezda Viktorovna; Baddeley, Lisa Jane; Lorentzen, Dag Arne; Sormakov, Dmitriy Anatolyevich

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-40-151-2022

Articles | Volume 40, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-40-151-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-40-151-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 40, issue 1

Regular paper

|

01 Mar 2022

Regular paper |

| 01 Mar 2022

An investigation into the spectral parameters of ultra-low-frequency (ULF) waves in the polar caps and magnetotail

Nataliya Sergeevna Nosikova, Nadezda Viktorovna Yagova, Lisa Jane Baddeley, Dag Arne Lorentzen, and Dmitriy Anatolyevich Sormakov

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Final revised paper (published on 01 Mar 2022)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 12 Oct 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of Nosikova et al.', Jonathan Rae, 09 Nov 2020
- AC1: 'Answer to the Referee', Nataliya Nosikova, 23 Nov 2020
RC2: 'Review of Nosikova et al.', Emil Kepko, 30 Nov 2020
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Nataliya Nosikova, 24 Dec 2020
AC3: 'Comment on angeo-2020-65', Nataliya Nosikova, 28 Dec 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (07 Jan 2021) by Minna Palmroth

AR by Nataliya Nosikova on behalf of the Authors (26 Mar 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Mar 2021) by Minna Palmroth

RR by Jonathan Rae (23 Jun 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Dear Dr Nosikova
Many thanks for your response and for engaging fully with my comments and concerns. There are a lot of changes made to the manuscript, and I thank the authors for that. The introduction is significantly improved, as is the discussion and conclusions, particularly on the physical characteristics of the Pc5 waves generated. In my previous review, I mentioned that the Pc5 analysis was very good and that I believed that this could be a paper itself without trying to establish the link between the waves and a given substorm onset.
My major concern is still in the conclusions: The paper concludes that the switching off of the Pc5 waves in the solar wind could be a new preparatory phase for the substorm onset seen 3-4 hours later. My concern with this is that there is a tremendous amount of physical mechanisms that will be operating within those 3-4 hours between the disappearance of a “solar wind driver” and the initiation of a substorm. The magnetosphere is not static, as the authors describe themselves, and the typical length of a substorm growth phase is ~3 hours (e.g., Borovsky et al., 1993; Forsyth et al., 2015. From the manuscript, it seems as if the authors are arguing that a resonance in the magnetotail would be sustained for 3-4 hours in order to drive the subsequent substorm onset. I still view this as a very difficult argument to make. Some questions that I have are as follows:
- what sustains the magnetotail cavity for 3-4 hours in order to drive substorm onset if the driver disappears?
- what is the role of energy input into the substorm growth phase through the solar wind?
- why does it take 3-4 hours for the substorm onset to be “triggered”?
I think that all of these questions about directly linking the chain of events that the manuscript proposes (i.e., Pc5 driver that disappears – 3-4 hour sustained resonances in the magnetotail – to substorm onset through wave processes) are incredibly difficult to answer with the current dataset.
I would still strongly encourage the authors to concentrate on their excellent Pc4-5 wave characteristics and not draw the conclusions that substorm onset happens as a result of the disappearance of Pc5 waves in the solar wind some 3-4 hours earlier. I’m sorry to say that I don’t think that there is sufficient evidence presented in the manuscript to be able to make that (very strong) conclusions.
sincerely
Jonathan Rae.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (06 Jul 2021)

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (02 Aug 2021) by Minna Palmroth

AR by Nataliya Nosikova on behalf of the Authors (20 Sep 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (21 Sep 2021) by Minna Palmroth

RR by Jonathan Rae (04 Jan 2022)

ED: Publish as is (10 Jan 2022) by Minna Palmroth

AR by Nataliya Nosikova on behalf of the Authors (20 Jan 2022) Manuscript

Short summary

This paper presents a study of millihertz magnetic pulsations seen in the magnetosphere and on the Earth under quiet space weather conditions. We found that these fluctuations appear in the magnetosphere as soon as disturbances with the same frequency vanish in the solar wind. The results of this work show the possibility of a substorm developing under absolutely quiet external conditions and allow us to assume that these pulsations represent a substorm preparatory phase.