Figure 2.

Schematic of magnetic island dynamics driven by magnetic reconnection. The enclosed area, A, inside magnetic islands increases due to coalescence and continuous reconnection at adjacent X‐lines. The island's magnetic flux content, ψ, changes due to magnetic reconnection. The arrows indicate island convection flows, wherein the inflow is shown in black solid arrows and the outflows are presented as white arrows. Last reconnected field lines are indicated as bold solid lines. The dashed lines represent magnetic separatrices, which embody reconnecting field lines.