G2 solar storm magnetosphere deformation Van Allen Belt collapse Spaceweather summary 01 march 2021

[Youcef]

Solar wind flowing from a Souteren Coronal Hole hit our magnetosphere around midnight yesterday. The effects were brief but intens sparked by a negative bz component aurora's covered the sky at northern lattitudes. The magnetosphere got compressed until it reached geosynchronous orbit it was also extremely deformed and I do believe the Van allen belts briefly collapsed on the day side of our planet along the bow shock. There was a notable spike in the Schuman resonance as well.

Video: Magnetosphere deformation

[Vancanneyt Sander]

Collapse is a bit of a wrong word here, the belt doesn’t collapse. The van Allen belt is the zone where magnetic field lines of the Earth come in our atmosphere forming the ring known as the van Allen belt. Along this zone the energy gets inserted into the atmosphere generating Aurora, during stronger storms it overflows to lower latitudes sparking aurorae over lower latitudes.