The Relationship between Auroral Boundary Location and Geomagnetic Disturbance Intensity

It is widely thought that the most intense geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs) are associated with the auroral electrojet, a relationship that should produce characteristic latitudinal and local time variations in GMD intensity. In an effort to quantitatively assess this relationship and these dependencies, we have derived auroral zone boundaries using data from the TIMED GUVI instrument for intense geomagnetic storms during which such data is available. By combining these derived boundaries with concurrent ground magnetometer data, we are able to illustrate how geomagnetic disturbance intensity varies relative to auroral boundaries as a function of both magnetic latitude and magnetic local time for storms of different intensity.