Ionospheric and magnetospheric disturbances caused by impacts of small comets and asteriods

Disturbances in the Earths’s ionosphere and magnetosphere caused by impacts of small comets and asteroids (with diameters from 50–60 m to 1–2 km) are analyzed. Two-dimensional hydrodynamical computations of the passage of a cosmic body through the atmosphere with allowance for deceleration and destruction due to aerodynamic loading and formation of the wake behind the body are performed. The tenuous wake facilitates an upward ejection of the plume (heated air and ablation products of the cosmic body). Numerical simulations of the motion of the plume and of its interaction with the geomagnetic field are performed. It is shown that part of the plume moves at higher than escape velocity. The rising plume operates as an MHD generator. Field-aligned currents heat the ionosphere and change its conductivity. The estimated magnetic variations are on the order of those of typical magnetic storms (for bodies with sizes comparable to the Tunguska meteorite) and are even higher for cosmic bodies with diameters of 200–400 m. Excitation of MHD waves is demonstrated. These disturbances are capable of triggering precipitation of particles from radiation belts and exciting intense electromagnetic noise. Strong oscillations of conducting ionospheric layers propagate radially from the place of impact of the low-velocity part of the plume to large distances from the impact point. For a 1-km body the energy of the high-velocity plume is comparable to that of the Earths’s magnetic field. This causes extremely intense magnetospheric disturbances. However, even 200-to 400-m bodies whose high-velocity part of the plume has energies exceeding 0.4–3 Mt TNT—i.e., much lower than the initial kinetic energy of the intruding body—produce global ionospheric and magnetospheric disturbances.