DOI: 10.7910/dvn/srbjcr
title: MMS Magnetopause Current Sheet Crossings Data - Beedle et al. 2022

description: Dataset of magnetopause (MP) current sheet crossings identified by the Paschmann et al. 2018 MMS magnetopause database. 

This data covers 561 MP crossings from 4 years of MMS transits from 2015 to 2018 across the dayside and flank magnetopause. These 561 crossings include only monotonic, complete magnetopause crossings or clear Harris sheet like events. We also only considered events that had a significant peak in their current densities. Where “significant" in our case was considered to be a current crossing where at least 50% of the crossing duration was within 15% of the maximum current peak during that crossing. This condition enabled us to select events with a strong current and high signal-to-noise ratios.

The magnetopause crossing times were taken from the MMS magnetopause crossing database created by Goetz Paschmann and Stein Haaland, and further developed by the International Space Science Institute Team 442, “Study of the physical processes in magnetopause and magnetosheath current sheets using a large MMS database” as analyzed in the paper Paschmann et al. 2018. 

Specifically, this data includes the Paschmann et al. 2018's MP crossing ID number identifying the specific event in their database and the start and end times of each crossing as identified by the database's automated minimum variance analysis of the magnetic field in boundary normal or LMN coordinates (Paschmann et al., 2018). The start time indicates when the MP current sheet for that specific MMS crossing began and the end time indicates when the current sheet ended. Additionally, the two datasets include averaged ion and electron data over each respective MP crossings, whose entries are described below:
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description: Ion Dataset Identifiers: (Note, MPC stands for "magnetopause crossing")

"#" - dataset entry number; 
"MPC ID" - Paschmann et al. 2018's MP crossing ID number; 
"MPC Start" - MPC start date (zulu time); 
"MPC End" - MPC end date (zulu time); 
"MPC Duration (s)" - MPC duration in seconds; 
"MPC V_normal (km/s)" - MP current sheet's boundary normal velocity in km/s (taken from Paschmann et al. 2018's database); 
"MPC Loc X_GSE (RE)" - X location of MPC in GSE coordinates in units of Re; 
"MPC Loc Y_GSE (RE)" - Y location of MPC in GSE coordinates in units of Re;
"MPC Loc Z_GSE (RE)" - Z location of MPC in GSE coordinates in units of Re;
"MPC Loc 𝜃 (º)" - 𝜃 location of MPC in our spherical GSE coordinates in degrees; 
"MPC Loc ɸ (º)" - ɸ location of MPC in our spherical GSE coordinates in degrees; 
"MPC Length (km)" - Length of MPC in units of km;
"MPC Length (di)" - Length of MPC in units of di;
"MPC Length (rgi)" - Length of MPC in units of rig;
"di (km)","rgi (km)" - Ion inertial length and ion gyroradius in units of km;
"Jr_curl" , "Jp_curl" , "Jt_curl" - R, ɸ, 𝜃 components of the curlometer current using our spherical GSE coordinates;
"Jr_totali" , "Jp_totali" , "Jt_totali" - R, ɸ, 𝜃 components of the total ion diamagnetic current; 
"Jr_gradNi" , "Jp_gradNi" , "Jt_gradNi" - R, ɸ, 𝜃 components of the ion density gradient component of the total ion diamagnetic current;
"Jr_divTi" , "Jp_divTi" , "Jt_divTi" - R, ɸ, 𝜃 components of the ion temperature divergence component of the total ion diamagnetic current;
"Ti_para (eV)" - Parallel ion temperature in eV;
"Ti_perp (eV)" - Perpendicular ion temperature in eV;
"Ni (cm^-3)" - Ion density in cm^-3;
"Bx (nT)" , "By (nT)" , "Bz (nT)" - X, Y, Z GSE components of the magnetic field in nT;
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description: Electron Dataset Identifiers: (Note, MPC stands for "magnetopause crossing")

"#" - dataset entry number; 
"MPC ID" - Paschmann et al. 2018's MP crossing ID number; 
"MPC Start" - MPC start date (zulu time); 
"MPC End" - MPC end date (zulu time); 
"de (km)","rge (km)" - Electron inertial length and electron gyroradius in units of km;
"Jr_totale" , "Jp_totale" , "Jt_totale" - R, ɸ, 𝜃 components of the total electron diamagnetic current; 
"Jr_gradNe" , "Jp_gradNe" , "Jt_gradNe" - R, ɸ, 𝜃 components of the electron density gradient component of the total electron diamagnetic current;
"Jr_divTe" , "Jp_divTe" , "Jt_divTe" - R, ɸ, 𝜃 components of the electron temperature divergence component of the total electron diamagnetic current;
"Te_para (eV)" - Parallel electron temperature in eV;
"Te_perp (eV)" - Perpendicular electron temperature in eV;
"Ne (cm^-3)" - Electron density in cm^-3;
description: Dataset created using data from the Paschmann et al. 2018 MMS magnetopause database:

Citation: Paschmann, G., Haaland, S. E., Phan, T., Sonnerup, B., Burch, J., Torbert, R., . . . Fuselier, S. (2018). Large-scale survey of the structure of the dayside mag- netopause by mms. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 123, 2018–2033. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JA025121