Investigation of Space Weather Effects by Swarm Magnetic Field Data: The SFAC Index

Abstract

The three Swarm satellites provide an optimum, low Earth orbit (LEO) and multi-spacecraft platform, to explore for the first time the local correlation between field-aligned currents (FACs), auroral electrojets, and magnetic perturbations at the Earth's surface. By combining Swarm and ground magnetic field data, one can investigate systematically the full correlation chain, whose final link controls the ground induced currents and related space weather effects. We introduce an integrated FAC product, the Sheet FAC (SFAC) index, as a convenient measure of the in-situ FAC data, and explore the correlations SFAC-AE, SFAC-PEJ and SFAC-dH, with AE the standard auroral electrojet index, PEJ the local, Swarm based, polar electrojet index, and dH the horizontal magnetic field perturbation at the Earth's surface. Given the good SFAC-dH correlation, we also suggest an extension of SFAC to higher LEO satellites, which cannot observe any more the electrojet currents, but are fully capable to monitor SFAC.