Professor at the Birkeland Center for Space Sciences Kjelmar Oksavik: “Hurricanes are well studied in the lower atmosphere of the Earth, they cause destruction and harm to people and infrastructure. We did not know that such a phenomenon can be found in the upper polar layers of the atmosphere, at an altitude of several hundred kilometers above the earth."
The cosmic hurricane was observed on August 20, 2014, when four DMSP (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) satellites detected a cyclone-like polar spot around the magnetic north pole with a diameter of more than 1000 km with many branches and counterclockwise rotation.
Having manifested its presence for almost 8 hours, the cosmic hurricane gradually disintegrated and merged with the twilight auroral oval.
“An interesting discovery is that the space hurricane occurred in conditions associated with very low geomagnetic activity. There was a long period of several hours of stable northern interplanetary magnetic field and very low density and solar wind speed.
Despite these extremely quiet conditions, the cosmic hurricane sent large flows of charged electrons into the upper polar layers of the atmosphere at a level comparable to the average strength of a geomagnetic storm."
The fact that the cosmic hurricane was associated with calm geomagnetic conditions leads scientists to believe that more cosmic hurricanes may appear in the future.
“We do not normally conduct observations in such calm geomagnetic conditions, so our discovery is really impressive.
It looks like we may have stumbled upon a new way of interaction between the solar wind, magnetosphere and ionosphere that no one knew about.
As researchers, we strive every day to understand the intriguing question of "how the earth is related to space."
This time I think we have opened an important new piece of the puzzle."
Research published in Nature Communications