Table 6.

Applicability of system descriptions to the magnetospheric system

Adjective	Applicable?	Statement
Adaptive	Yes	The magnetosphere reacts to and adapts to the time-varying solar-wind environments
Driven	Yes	By the time-varying solar wind, which transfers mass and energy into the system and drives a global circulation
Dissipative	Yes	Dissipation of electric currents, loss of particles to the atmosphere or to outside the system
Feedback	Yes	In response to strong reconnection there is mass loading of dayside reconnection by stored plasmas and by ionospheric outflows
Diverse	Yes	The subsystems (plasmas) of the magnetosphere are certainly diverse, it terms of their properties, origins, losses, evolutions, time and space locations, and interactions
Open	Yes	Energy and mass flow in from driver and flow out
Interconnected	Yes	Mediated by waves
Interdependent	Yes	Subsystems coevolve with each other
Emergence	Yes	4 examples: auroral arcs, pulsating aurora, substorms, the electron radiation belt
Nonlinear	Yes	There are nonlinear responses and feedback processes. There are multiple and variable time lags
Turbulent	Yes	Flow measurements in the magnetotail show clear evidence of flow turbulence
Cyclic behavior	Yes	The 3-hr substorm-recurrence period
Irreversible	Yes	Do not observe reverse convection, or de-energization of charged particles by plasma waves. The system has dissipation to the ionosphere and it has high-Reynolds-number regions
Criticality of self-organization	Yes	The conclusions of numerous data studies
Tipping point/phase transition	Yes	The substorm instability and the change in morphology of the magnetosphere
Complex	Yes	A removal of part of the magnetospheric system will change its behavior. The magnetosphere has diverse subsystems, multilevel interactions, multilevel structures, complicated interactions, and nonlinearities