Pi2 pulsations and substorm onsets: A review

Pi2 pulsations have been the subject of continuous study since they were recognized to be an integral part of the magnetospheric substorm. With the advent of arrays of ground instruments the nature of the Pi2 has begun to be understood. As adopted by the 13th General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics in 1963, Pi2 is a designation that includes impulsive pulsations in the period range from 40 to 150 s. The Pi2 signal encompasses a class of pulsations that represents two fundamental processes. The first process is the sudden generation of field‐aligned currents in association with the disruption of cross‐tail currents in the plasma sheet and their subsequent effects on the ionosphere. The ionosphere appears to be something more than a passive load for this electrodynamic impulse. It responds, sending currents back into a magnetosphere whose topology is changing and, perhaps producing the feedback necessary to cause the explosive growth of the substorm current system. Oscillations of these currents are detected across the nightside of the Earth at onset as the midlatitude and high‐latitude portions of Pi2. The second process is the impulse response of the inner magnetosphere to the compressional waves that are generated at substorm onset. Traveling inward, they stimulate field line resonances and surface waves at the plasmapause and excite global oscillations in the inner magnetosphere. The two processes produce wave modes that couple and cross‐couple threading energy into the inner magnetosphere and ultimately to the ground. The purpose of this review is to construct a phenomenological overview of the Pi2.