Pseudobreakups

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Pseudobreakups (Akasofu, 1964) are short-lived auroral substorm-like events that don't grow to the strength of a substorm. They can occur as

Pseudobreakups have most of the signatures found in real substorms, like

However, only substorms are associated with a significant poleward expansion of auroras and currents in the ionosphere. The spatial scale of the substorms in the longitudinal direction is, on the other hand, more complicated thing (Koskinen et al., 1993).

At least two reasons have been suggested why pseudobreakups don't grow into a real substorm:

References

See also: