Interhemispheric Comparison of Dipole Tilt Angle Effects on Latitude of MidAltitude Cusp.pdfVIP

CHIN.PHYS.LETT. Vol. 25, No. 5 (2008) 1916 Interhemispheric Comparison of Dipole Tilt Angle Effects on Latitude of Mid-Altitude Cusp 1,2 1 3 1 GUO Jian-Guang() , SHI Jian-Kui() , ZHANG Tie-Long , LIU Zhen-Xing() 1State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, Center for Space Science and Applied Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080 2 Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049 3 Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria (Received 18 September 2007) A statistical study of interhemispheric comparison of dipole tilt angle effect on the latitude of the mid-altitude cusp is preformed by a data set of the Cluster cusp crossings over a 5-year period. The result shows that the dipole tilt angle has a clear control of the cusp latitudinal location. When the dipole tilts sunwards, the cusp is shifted poleward. The northern cusp moves 1◦ ILAT for every 15.4◦ increase in the dipole tilt angle, while the southern cusp moves 1◦ ILAT for every 20.8◦ increase in the dipole tilt angle. This suggests that an interhemispheric difference appears in the dependence of cusp latitudinal location on the dipole tilt angle. PACS: 94. 20. Wh, 94. 30. Cg, 94. 30. C− Two narrow funnel-shaped cusps in Earth’s day- mid-altitude.[9] In a recent paper, Pitout et al.[10] con- side magnetosphere are generally recognized as be- ducted a statistical st