Cases and statistical study on Hot Flow Anomalies with Cluster spacecraft data

Hot Flow Anomalies (HFAs) are phenomena that frequently appear in the vicinity of the Earth's bow shock. We have identified 765 HFA events with Cluster spacecraft data from 2003 to 2009. We study the plasma and magnetic field variations during typical HFAs. Then we study the average structure of HFAs using the superposed epoch method during a 200 s time interval, with the HFA onset time as the epoch time. The results show that HFAs can be classified into four classes based on variations of the dynamic pressure over time, namely "-+" (down-up), "+-" (up-down), "M" (up-down-up) and "W" (up-down-up-down-up), where the letters represent similar shapes with the variation trends of the dynamic pressure. Trends of other parameters are highly related to those of the dynamic pressure with obvious characteristics of the classification. Moreover, statistical results suggest that the number of HFA events varies in years. Compared with the speed of solar wind and sunspot number, the number of HFA events in each year has positive correlation with the former, while it has little relation with the latter. The result of this paper will provide data base for further studies on the mechanisms of the formation, the structural evolution and other relative questions of HFAs.http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000302928700035&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=8e1609b174ce4e31116a60747a720701Engineering, MultidisciplinaryMaterials Science, MultidisciplinarySCI(E)EI6ARTICLE51402-14185