Correlation Between Ground-Based Observations of Substorm Signatures and Magnetotail Dynamics.

We present a substorm event study combining Cluster and ground-based instrumentation. For this event ground-based magnetograms show a substorm onset and two separate substorm intensifications over Scandinavia, at the time located in the pre-midnight sector. During the substorm Cluster is located in the southern plasma sheet at a downtail distance of 18.5 Re. For all the substorm signatures seen on ground, corresponding plasma sheet drop-outs and re-entries of all or individual spacecraft of the Cluster constellation are observed. In general, plasma sheet drop-outs are assumed to be due to plasma sheet thinning/thickening and/or to magnetotail flapping. However, in the literature there has been some disagreement on both spatial and temporal characteristics of plasma sheet thinning and thickening during substorms. We therefore investigate the causes for the plasma sheet drop-outs for this event, which at first glance appears to show plasma sheet thinning at substorm onset, contradictory to the present standpoint in the literature.