Statistical description of the bulge-type auroral substorm in the far ultraviolet

Abstract

Using global auroral images at ultraviolet wavelengths during 116 substorms, we have obtained quantitative measures of key features of the bulge aurora and oval aurora: their temporal variations, their locations, rates, and characteristics of gross expansion and decay, and the variability of these parameters. The expansion period identified solely from images varied primarily from 10 to 40 minutes, with an average of 30.9 minutes. To avoid mixing expansion data with recovery data, we normalized the time of each substorm to one unit from onset to maximum expansion. The average onset location was 22.6 magnetic local time (MLT) and 66.8° invariant latitude (ILat), in good agreement with previous analyses. We found that the bulge aurora rapidly expanded out of the onset location approximately equally to the west (surge) and to the east, so that the average center of the bulge remained close to the onset MLT. This is also the case for average location of the maximum expansion in latitude of the bulge. Thus the bulge is offset about 1 1/2 hours west of midnight. By half the expansion period the bulge has usually expanded poleward sufficiently to reveal a brightened portion of the original auroral oval. This brightening expands less than 1 hour MLT to the west, but rapidly to the east, farther than the east end of the bulge. Thus the two auroras are offset in MLT. The bulge expansion is fastest initially but slows for the second half of the expansion period. The ends of the bulge continue a small expansion poleward during early recovery when the center of the bulge slowly retreats. The large spreads of substorm expansion times, the onset locations and in the locations in ΔMLT and ΔILat of the key features of these auroras, argue strongly for the need to normalize the time of expansion and location of key features of the substorm for any kind of superposed epoch analysis to be meaningful. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union.