Causality and Information Transfer Between the Solar Wind and the Magnetosphere–Ionosphere System
Pouya Manshour,
Georgios Balasis,
Giuseppe Consolini,
Constantinos Papadimitriou,
Milan Paluš
Affiliations
Pouya Manshour
Department of Complex Systems, Institute of Computer Science of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Pod Vodárenskou věží 2, 182 07 Prague 8, Czech Republic
Georgios Balasis
Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing, National Observatory of Athens, I. Metaxa & Vas. Pavlou Street, 15236 Penteli, Greece
Giuseppe Consolini
INAF-Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, 00133 Rome, Italy
Constantinos Papadimitriou
Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing, National Observatory of Athens, I. Metaxa & Vas. Pavlou Street, 15236 Penteli, Greece
Milan Paluš
Department of Complex Systems, Institute of Computer Science of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Pod Vodárenskou věží 2, 182 07 Prague 8, Czech Republic
An information-theoretic approach for detecting causality and information transfer is used to identify interactions of solar activity and interplanetary medium conditions with the Earth’s magnetosphere–ionosphere systems. A causal information transfer from the solar wind parameters to geomagnetic indices is detected. The vertical component of the interplanetary magnetic field (Bz) influences the auroral electrojet (AE) index with an information transfer delay of 10 min and the geomagnetic disturbances at mid-latitudes measured by the symmetric field in the H component (SYM-H) index with a delay of about 30 min. Using a properly conditioned causality measure, no causal link between AE and SYM-H, or between magnetospheric substorms and magnetic storms can be detected. The observed causal relations can be described as linear time-delayed information transfer.
