Polar wind

The Earth's plasma fountain, showing oxygen, helium, and hydrogen ions which gush into space from regions near the Earth's poles. The faint yellow area shown above the north pole represents gas lost from Earth into space; the green area is the aurora borealis—or plasma energy pouring back into the atmosphere.[1]

The polar wind or plasma fountain is a permanent outflow of plasma from the polar regions of Earth's magnetosphere.[2]: 29  Conceptually similar to the solar wind, it is one of several mechanisms for the outflow of ionized particles. Ions accelerated by a polarization electric field known as an ambipolar electric field is believed to be the primary cause of polar wind. Similar processes operate on other planets.[3]

  1. ^ Plasma fountain Source, press release: Carlowicz, Mike; "Solar Wind Squeezes Some of Earth's Atmosphere into Space", December 1998
  2. ^ Schunk, R. W.; Nagy, Andrew (2000). Ionospheres: physics, plasma physics, and chemistry. Cambridge atmospheric and space science series. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-63237-9.
  3. ^ Gronoff, G.; Arras, P.; Baraka, S.; Bell, J. M.; Cessateur, G.; Cohen, O.; Curry, S. M.; Drake, J. J.; Elrod, M.; Erwin, J.; Garcia-Sage, K.; Garraffo, C.; Glocer, A.; Heavens, N. G.; Lovato, K. (August 2020). "Atmospheric Escape Processes and Planetary Atmospheric Evolution". Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics. 125 (8). arXiv:2003.03231. Bibcode:2020JGRA..12527639G. doi:10.1029/2019JA027639. ISSN 2169-9380.