Causality and Information Transfer Between the Solar Wind and the Magnetosphere–Ionosphere System

• Main Authors: Pouya Manshour, Georgios Balasis, Giuseppe Consolini, Constantinos Papadimitriou, Milan Paluš
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Entropy
• Subjects: time series; causality; information transfer; time reversal; solar wind-magnetosphere–ionosphere system; space weather
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/4/390

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 (<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mi>B</mi><mi>z</mi></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula>) 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.