ИСТИНА

During the long history of intense substorm studies multiple satellite and ground based observations have been accumulated. However, to date we have not been able to get a comprehensive self-consistent picture of substorm development, which could explain all observed substorm phenomena in a non-contradictory way. This can be done by implementing the latest changes in the description of large-scale magnetospheric dynamics, which so far have not been included in the analysis of substorm development. They can be summarized as follows: • the impossibility to use the frozen-in approximation in the case of plasma pressure balance; • high level of plasma turbulence and turbulent transport in the plasma sheet; • location of trapping boundary inside the auroral oval and the auroral oval mapping to the surrounding the Earth plasma ring in contrast to the traditional mapping to the plasma sheet; • formation of high latitude quasistationary magnetic holes and bumps in the plasma sheet and the ring current, which can produce changes in the direction of the flux tube volume gradient. We try to show that obtaining the self-consistent picture of substorm processes requires the proper analysis of ring current dynamics, taking into account that the main part of the auroral oval is mapped to the outer part of the ring current. Such picture is crucial to understand the processes of outer electron radiation belt dropouts during the storm time main phases and acceleration during the storm recovery phases. We analyze the problem of the energy supply to the auroral arc. Selection of the component of large-scale magnetospheric convection across the boundary of the field-aligned potential drop permits to solve the problem. It also explains the field-aligned particle beams formation at the boundaries and inside inverted V structures accompanied by generation of Alfvén waves.