On magnetopause inflation under radial IMF

•Long-lasting radial IMF results in 50% decrease of the magnetosheath pressure.•Pressure decrease is accompanied by prominent magnetopause inflation.•Determination of inflation is affected by accuracy of solar wind timing and models used.

Full understanding of the magnetosphere interaction with radial IMF structures embedded in the solar wind flow is far from completeness. In order to analyze the effects of radial IMF, we use THEMIS observations of the magnetopause and magnetosheath together with upstream data acquired from ACE and Wind monitors as well as from the OMNI data base. We demonstrate a prominent magnetopause inflation and low pressure magnetosheath (LPM) mode under long-lasting radial IMF. We propose that these phenomena result from a kinetic effect of energetic ions taking the energy away from the pressure balance at the magnetopause. We show that strict quantitative determination of the inflation and LPM mode as a function of the cone angle is difficult because of the problems with reliable determination of the upstream and magnetosheath conditions. The shortcomings are caused by such effects as ambiguous time delay for the solar wind propagation, THEMIS orbital bias and model-dependent estimations of the magnetopause inflation.