AURORAL OVAL DEFORMATION UNDER THE MAGNETIC POLES SHIFT

Abstract

The article presents the results of verification for the base hypothesis about the physical mechanism of magnetic pole shift impact on the ionosphere. In the previous works it was implicitly assumed that an auroral oval keeps its shape and intensity invariant in geomagnetic coordinates and shifts in geographic coordinates according to the magnetic pole shift. This hypothesis is verified by means of DMSP satellite data for 1983–2016. The statistical analysis has shown the shift of equator-ward boundary northward both in US and Siberian sectors. While the observed shifts for the magnetic and geomagnetic poles are 9° and 1.7° respectively for the same period of time, the shift of the equatorward boundary is less than 2°–3°.