MAGNETIC CLOUDS: A SUBJECT OF SPACE WEATHER PREDICTION

Magnetic clouds are ideal objects for solar-terrestrial studies because of their simplicity and their extended time intervals of southward and northward magnetic fields. Magnetic clouds constitute a significant subset of coronal mass ejections with remarkable characteristics in the interplanetary medium and a strong influence on the Earth's magnetosphere, giving rise to geomagnetic storms. The evolution of such a cloud from the neighborhood of the Sun up to the Earth is numerically simulated for two cases, without and with a presence of a faster moving shock front. Its influence on the magnetosphere can be seen by the triggered geomagnetic storm. Therefore, magnetic clouds are an important subject for space weather predictions.