High‐density O+ in Earth's outer magnetosphere and its effect on dayside magnetopause magnetic reconnection

The warm plasma cloak is a source of magnetospheric plasma that contain significant O+. When the O+ density in the magnetosphere near the magnetopause is >0.2 cm‐3 and the H+ density is 20% due to mass‐loading only about 2% to 4% of the time. However, during geomagnetic storms, O+ dominates the mass density of the warm plasma cloak and these mass densities are very high. Therefore, a separate study is conducted to determine the effect of the warm plasma cloak on magnetopause reconnection during geomagnetically disturbed times. This study shows that the warm plasma cloak reduces the reconnection rate significantly about 25% of the time during disturbed conditions. publishedVersion