Effects of the solar wind-magnetosphere coupling in March 1989

The March 1989 solar events caused important effects in the Earth’s magnetosphere. Information for the southern auroral oval as not previously been available. Accordingly, geomagnetic recordings registered at Belgrano II, Dumont D’Urville, Halley Bay, Mirny, Molodezhnaya, Sanae, Syowa Base and Vostok stations have been used to study the large geomagnetic storm of March 13 and a substorm on March 5. For the big storm, the equivalent southern hemisphere geomagnetic indices (SAE, SAL and SAU) from these eight stations located in the Antarctic continent have been calculated. Differences in the amplitudes of the northern and southern electrojet indices have been observed. The coupling parameter, e, and the total energy dissipated by the magnetosphere, UT, were determined for the above mentioned intervals. We used other criterion to calculate particles life times in the equatorial ring current, τ. e and UT parameters are integrated over the substorm period considered. The results indicate the existence of other...