| The configuration and topology of the Earth's magnetotail is radically altered during geomagnetic substorms by the formation and subsequent ejection of large scale magnetic and plasma structures called plasmoids. The formation, structure, evolution and topology of plasmoids are studied by examining the magnetic and plasma data from the 1983 ISEE 3 Geotail Mission. This deep tail data set is combined with observations in the middle tail by IMP 8, at geosynchronous orbit and from ground auroral magnetometer stations to develop a unified flux rope plasmoid model. It is found that plasmoids are highly correlated with geomagnetic substorms, are large (... |
