The May 2024 Storm: The Cusps and Dayside Magnetopause in Simulated Soft X‐Rays
Abstract The coronal mass ejection (CME) arriving at Earth on 10 May 2024 caused the most intense geomagnetic storm in the last two decades, resulting in highly unusual cusp and magnetopause dynamics. We simulate soft X‐Ray emission due to solar wind charge exchange with exospheric neutrals to image the global dayside dynamics, focusing on the impact of a dense CME current sheet during the storm main phase. The magnetopause moves inward to , and the cusps manifest as nearly parallel emission ridges in X‐Ray. As the interplanetary magnetic field reverses, the cusp ridges move apart to higher latitudes for minutes after the reversal, addressing the open question of how the cusps evolve during and after northward turning of the IMF. Our work highlights soft X‐ray imaging enabling simultaneous observations of extreme solar‐wind impacts across multiple magnetospheric regions.
Authors
- Brandon Lee Burkholder (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8702-5806)
- B. L. Alterman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6673-3432)
- J. W. Bonnell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0675-7907)
- David Gary Sibeck (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3240-7510)
- S. M. Petrinec (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0329-7087)
- V. G. Merkin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4344-5424)
- Ying Zou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9704-1735)
- Jonathan Ng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5183-3577)
- Hyunju Kim Connor (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1327-1809)
- Li‐Jen Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4768-189X)
- Gonzalo Cucho‐Padin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6861-9307)
- Kevin H Pham (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5031-5519)
- Frederick Scott Porter (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6374-1119)
Institutions
- NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (US)
- NSF NCAR High Altitude Observatory (US)
- University of Maryland, Baltimore (US)
- Goddard Space Flight Center (US)
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (US)
- Space Sciences Laboratory (US)
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Published
- 2026-10-24
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1029/2025gl120479
- Primary Topic
- Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00