Geomagnetic avtivity triggered by interplanetary shocks: The shock impact angle as a controlling factor

We study the influence of interplanetary (IP) shock impact angles in the shock geoeffectiveness focusing on simulations and observations. In our simulations, we use OpenGGCM simulations to study the magnetospheric and ionospheric responses to shock impacts. Three cases are presented here: two inclined shocks, with 3.7 and 7.4 Mach numbers, and a frontal shock, whose shock normal is along the Sun-Earth line, with Mach number of 7.4. We find that, in the two inclined cases, due to the north-south asymmetry, the magnetotail is deflected southward, leading to a mild compression. The geomagnetic activity observed in the nightside ionosphere is then weak. On the other hand, in the head-on case, the magnetotail is compressed from both sides symmetrically. This compression triggers a substorm. By comparing the strong inclined shock and the frontal shock, we find that, despite the inclined shock having a larger Mach number, the frontal shock leads to a larger geomagnetic response in the nightside ionosphere. As a result, we conclude that IP shocks with similar upstream conditions, such as Mach number, can have different geoeffectiveness, depending on their shock normal orientation. In our observational study, we present a survey of IP shocks at 1 AU using Wind and ACE satellite data from Jan 1995 to Dec 2013 to study the same shock-related effects. A shock list covering one and a half solar cycle is compiled. We use data from SuperMAG, a large chain with more than 300 geomagnetic stations, to study geoeffectiveness triggered by IP shocks. The SuperMAG SML index (enhanced AL index), is used to quantify substorm strength. The jumps of the SML index triggered by shock impacts is investigated in terms of shock orientation and speed. We find that, in general, strong and almost frontal shocks are more geoeffective than inclined shocks with low speed. The highest correlations (R = 0.78) occurs for fixed shock speed and varying the shock impact angle. We attribute this result, predicted previously by simulations, to the fact that frontal shocks compress the magnetosphere symmetrically from all sides, which contributes to the release of magnetic energy stored in the tail, which in turn can produce moderate to strong auroral substorms, which are then observed by ground based magnetometers. These results confirm our previous numerical simulations.