Seasonal and diurnal variations of Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability at terrestrial magnetopause

Abstract

Abstract Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability is ubiquitous at Earth’s magnetopause and plays an important role in plasma entry into the magnetosphere during northward interplanetary magnetic fields. Here, using one solar cycle of data from NASA THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macro scale Interactions during Substorms) and MMS (Magnetospheric Multiscale) missions, we found that KHI occurrence rates show seasonal and diurnal variations with the rate being high near the equinoxes and low near the solstices. The instability depends directly on the Earth’s dipole tilt angle. The tilt toward or away from the Sun explains most of the seasonal and diurnal variations, while the tilt in the plane perpendicular to the Earth‐Sun line explains the difference between the equinoxes. The results reveal the critical role of dipole tilt in modulating KHI across the magnetopause as a function of time, highlighting the importance of Sun-Earth geometry for solar wind-magnetosphere interaction and for space weather.