MMS Observations of a Compressed, Strongly Driven Magnetopause During the 2024 Mother's Day Storm
Abstract From 10 to 12 May 2024, a series of coronal mass ejections led to one of the strongest geomagnetic storms of the century, referred to as the Mother's Day or Gannon Storm. MMS's position on the dayside magnetosphere on 11 May provided observations of a strongly driven and compressed reconnecting magnetopause. Because of the driving conditions, the magnetopause became saturated with outflows that dominated the mass density of the plasma environment. In the reconnecting magnetopause, MMS observes signatures of parallel electron heating on the magnetopause's magnetosheath side, but anomalous and significant electron cooling, especially from the perpendicular electron temperature on the magnetosphere side, possibly driven by additional mechanisms besides reconnection. Even with the strong driving and outflows, we find an expected normalized reconnection rate for the primary exhaust, indicating insensitivity to these conditions. The unnormalized rate, however, is atypically large and scales with the driving conditions.
Authors
- Brandon Lee Burkholder (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8702-5806)
- Kelly A. Cantwell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9354-9734)
- Rachel C. Rice (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7091-8122)
- J. L. Burch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0452-8403)
- J. R. Shuster (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9425-2281)
- R. G. Gomez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7888-668X)
- W. Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5260-658X)
- Harsha Gurram (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8698-3383)
- R. B. Torbert (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7188-8690)
- K. J. Genestreti (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6890-2973)
- M. Øieroset (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3112-1561)
- Jason M H Beedle (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5924-9394)
- K. J. Trattner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5169-109X)
- Li‐Jen Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4768-189X)
- S. A. Fuselier (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4101-7901)
- A. Marshall (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5814-1717)
- T. D. Phan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6924-9408)
- D. J. Gershman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1304-4769)
- Martin Lindberg (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6342-225X)
- S. K. Vines (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7515-3285)
Institutions
- Dartmouth College (US)
- Southwest Research Institute (US)
- Goddard Space Flight Center (US)
- University of New Hampshire (US)
- Queen Mary University of London (GB)
- Heliophysics (US)
- Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (US)
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- University of Maryland, Baltimore County (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Published
- 2025-12-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1029/2025gl118368
- Primary Topic
- Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration