Magnetotail flow bursts: Association to global magnetospheric circulation, relationship to ionospheric activity and direct evidence for localization

A series of bursty bulk flow events (BBFs) were observed by GEOTAIL and WIND in the geomagnetotail. IMP8 at the solar wind showed significant energy coupling into the magnetosphere, while the UVI instrument on POLAR evidenced significant energy transfer to the ionosphere during two substorms. There was good correlation between BBFs and ionospheric activity observed by UVI even when ground magnetic signatures were absent, suggesting that low ionospheric conductivity at the active sector may be responsible for this observation. During the second substorm no significant flux transport was evidenced past WIND in stark contrast to GEOTAIL and despite the small intersatellite separation ((3.54, 2.88, −0.06) R E ). Throughout the intervals studied there were significant differences in the individual flow bursts at the two satellites, even during longitudinally extended ionospheric activations. We conclude that the half‐scale‐size of transport‐bearing flow bursts is less than 3 R E .