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Abstract. H  observations of high-velocity clouds (HVCs) indicate, that they are interacting with their ambient medium. Even clouds located in the very outer Galactic halo or the intergalactic space seem to interact with their ambient medium. In this paper, we investigate the dynamical evolution of high velocity neutral gas clouds moving through a hot magnetized ambient plasma by means of two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic plasma-neutral gas simulations. This situation is representative for the fast moving dense neutral gas cloudlets in the Magellanic Stream as well as for high velocity clouds in general. The question on the dynamical and thermal stabilization of a cold dense neutral cloud in a hot thin ambient halo plasma is numerically investigated. The simulations show the formation of a comet-like head-tail structure combined with a magnetic barrier of increased field strength which exerts a stabilizing pressure on the cloud and hinders hot plasma from diffusing into the cloud. The simulations can explain both the survival times in the intergalactic medium and the existence of head-tail high velocity clouds.

Black aurora often exhibits the signature of vortex structures. In this paper, it is proposed that pseudo-three-dimensional drift-like electrostatic modes can play a very important role in those phenomena. Employing a two-fluid model, we derive a set of nonlinear equations governing the dynamics of long wavelength inertial convective cells and coupled drift-acoustic waves in the presence of geomagnetic field-aligned plasma flows. It is shown that free energy stored in the latter can cause purely growing and oscillatory instabilities in the auroral ionosphere. The threshold conditions as well as expressions for the linear growth rates are presented. Furthermore, it is found that possible stationary solutions of the nonlinear equations can be represented in the form of vortex structures. It is, therefore, likely that the nonlinear low-frequency electrostatic modes, as described here, may possibly account for the coherent vortex structures within black aurora, as they are often observed during the late recovery phase of a substorm