{"id":2158,"date":"2025-02-21T23:49:22","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T23:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurorasaurudev.wpengine.com\/?p=2158"},"modified":"2025-02-21T23:53:44","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T23:53:44","slug":"what-is-an-auroral-substorm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.aurorasaurus.org\/?p=2158","title":{"rendered":"What is an auroral substorm?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Vincent Ledvina, Laura Edson<\/span><\/p>\n

With thanks to Valerie Svaldi for additional input<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

One of the <\/span>terms<\/span><\/a> you\u2019ll often aurora chasers and scientists use is \u201csubstorm.\u201d You might hear it referring to the best parts of an aurora chase, or as something to patiently wait for. But what does it mean, and where does it come from? While the aurora is commonly depicted in film and photos as erupting into color and motion, it doesn\u2019t dance that way continuously all night. Instead, the aurora has a natural progression called a \u201csubstorm\u201d, a sort of\u00a0 \u201clife cycle\u201d every few hours that happens multiple times a day. Substorms vary drastically due to the ever-changing energy from the Sun that drives them, but scientists look for telltale signatures in visible aurora and other data; there is a standard rhythm to their dance. In this blog post, we\u2019ll walk through the basic steps. Note that this post is about daily auroras at northern high latitudes like Fairbanks, Yellowknife, Churchill, Troms\u00f8, Abisko, and Kiruna, and does <\/span>not <\/b>include the larger geomagnetic storms that cause more widespread, irregular displays. We will also primarily be covering the perspective of being underneath the lights at these high latitudes, rather than viewing them more from the side hundreds of miles further from the poles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n