Basic cause of a magnetospheric substorm Original Research Article

A magnetospheric substorm is found to be caused by the electron precipitation that produces the aurora during substorm expansion, where the resulting increase in current of the substorm current wedge causes the accompanying dipolarization of the Earthʹs magnetic field. This model, which explains the basic features of a substorm, predicts that the incoming electron precipitation during a substorm has to be the basic cause of a magnetospheric substorm.