Ring current distribution seen by multi-spacecraft data

The study of terrestrial ring current (RC) and field-aligned currents (FACs) are important towards understanding of global magnetospheric behavior and the transport of energy and momentum of trapped particles in the radiation belts. The observation of spatiotemporal evolution of the magnetospheric current distribution has become possible using multi-spacecraft data by CLUSTER, THEMIS and MMS. The in-situ measurements from the magnetometer instruments on board multi-spacecraft constellation are used in the calculation of local current density from the magnetic field gradients. A statistical study is carried out to better understand the morphological behavior of the ring current and its relation to region-2 field-aligned currents with respect to magnetic local time (MLT). The findings of the results will be discussed.