Ionospheric Signatures Of Bursty Bulk Flows

While the plasma convection in the Earth's magnetosphere was for a long timeconsidered to consist mostly of laminar flows with wide spatial extents, about adecade ago the phenomenon of bursty bulk flows (BBFs), which now could beunderstood as long, but narrow channels of fast earthward plasma flow in thecentral plasma sheet of the magnetospheric tail, was discovered. Soon after thisit became clear that such events are not exceptional, but a large portion of theearthward plasma flow in the inner part of the magnetospheric tail is organisedin this bursty, intermittent mode. Since the Earth's magnetosphere is connectedby highly conducting magnetic field lines with its ionosphere, the next logicalstep was the search for the ionospheric signatures of BBFs. We review the resultsobtained so far in this young field of Space Physics, in terms of theauroral and ground magnetic signatures caused by BBFs, the particle precipitationto the ionosphere, as well as of the ionospheric electrodynamics of the processesassociated with the BBFs in the magnetosphere. Finally, we briefly review somemodels of ionosphere-magnetosphere coupling with respect to their ability to explainthe ionospheric signatures observed.