What is a global auroral substorm?

The departure of the aurora from quiet levels in a dynamic manner constitutes some type of auroral “breakup” event. Research into the auroral breakup predates the International Geophysical Year (1957/1958). This feature of the aurora, and the later, more global concept of the auroral substorm, has become a focus for much of the auroral research that occurs today. New instrumentation and global collaborations continue to refine our knowledge of the substorm process and how it proceeds in the ionosphere. In particular, global auroral imaging has advanced our understanding of the dynamics of the process and has given us the ability to put localized observations into a global perspective. Fundamentally new cycles of auroral activity are now understood to exist, and this has provided a means by which auroral activity can answer questions about magnetospheric substorm dynamics. Along with this wealth of observations has come a wide range of theories purporting to explain the mechanism of the onset of this phenomenon. There is, however, no single theory which stands out as clearly explaining the wide range of active auroral phenomena. A synthesis which combines these theories and allows them to each explain individual aspects of the problem appears to be required. This has led to a new way of understanding the active aurora as a set of processes or modules which occur either coupled together or independent of one another to form a particular event. This view represents a fundamental departure from the view of the substorm as a single unchanging entity. Auroral activity can rather be thought of as the earthward end of a diverse set of ionospheric and magnetospheric processes which couple together to form different cyclical patterns. A symbolic representation of this modularization is presented to simplify future schematics of large‐scale auroral dynamics.