Using information from ESA’s Swarm satellite constellation, scientists have made a discovery about how energy generated by electrically-charged particles in the solar wind flows into Earth’s atmosphere – surprisingly, more of it heads towards the magnetic north pole than towards the magnetic south pole.
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This research was supported by the ESA Living Planet Fellowship project SIEMIC: Swarm Investigation of the Energetics of Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling.
Pakhotin, I.P., Mann, I.R., Xie, K. et al. Northern preference for terrestrial electromagnetic energy input from space weather. Nat Commun 12, 199 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20450-3