Some theories

• Plasmasphere drains into LLBL, flows over pole and makes a superdense plasmasheet, perfect for RC

  • it takes a few days. Storms take < 1 hour from SSC.

• Storm heats atmosphere in auroral zone, sending upflows of O+ into plasmasheet that convect to RC

  • Daglis shows that RC O+ is very prompt, < 20 minutes
  • Sheldon showed that O+ & He+ are nearly simultaneous

• Substorms preferentially heat O+

  • Some storms have no substorms
  • The O+ dominance is at lower energy than usual

Notes: