Atmospheric and Magnetospheric Sciences

The interaction of the supersonic solar wind with the Earth's dipole magnetic field is surprisingly complicated. About 5 orders of magnitude of spatial scales are involved in the overall behavior of the magneto spheric system, and time scales ranging from seconds for auroral pulsations to minutes for the response of the global magnetosphere to solar wind pressure changes to several days for the intensification of the electron radiation belt to years for the decay of relativistic electrons. The physical length scales of the plasma vary from a Debye length of 0.4 cm in the ionosphere to ion gyro radii of 1000 km in the magnetotail and in the ion radiation belt; the plasma-physical timescales associated with the wave substructure can also be very short

• Troposphere
• Stratosphere
• Mesosphere
• Thermosphere
• Exosphere