How do interplanetary shock impact angles control the size of the geoeffective magnetosphere?

In this paper, we investigate temporal and spatial magnetosphere response to the impact of interplanetary (IP) shocks with different inclinations and speeds on the Earth’s magnetosphere. A data set with more than 500 IP shocks is used to identify positive sudden impulse (SI⁺) events as expressed by the SuperMAG partial ring current index. The SI⁺ rise time (RT), defined as the time interval between compression onset and maximum SI⁺ signature, is obtained for each event. We use RT and a model suggested by Takeuchi et al. (2002) to calculate the geoeffective magnetospheric distance (GMD) in the shock propagation direction as a function of shock impact angle and speed for each event. GMD is a generalization of the geoeffective magnetosphere length (GML) suggested by Takeuchi et al. (2002), defined from the subsolar point along the X line toward the tail. We estimate statistical GMD and GML values which are then reported for the first time. We also show that, similarly to well-known results for RT, the highest correlation coefficient for the GMD and impact angle is found for shocks with high speeds and small impact angles, and the faster and more frontal the shock, the smaller the GMD. This result indicates that the magnetospheric response depends heavily on shock impact angle. With these results, we argue that the prediction and forecasting of space weather events, such as those caused by coronal mass ejections, will not be accurately accomplished if the disturbances’ angles of impact are not considered as an important parameter within model and observation scheme capabilities.