Settings and manifestations of the explosive activity in the Earths magnetotail, as well as its onset mechanisms and key pre-onset conditions are reviewed. there, causing magnetic storms and substorms?(Kamide et?al. 1998). In contrast to storms, which are directly associated with large-scale solar wind disturbances, substorms often start suddenly, expanding within minutes after an hour-long preparatory or growth phase?(McPherron 1970). It is known?(Sergeev et?al. 2012a; Angelopoulos et?al. 2013) that the energy for such substorm explosions is usually accumulated in the Earths magnetotail, the night-side region where magnetic field lines of the Earths dipole field are stretched in the anti-sunward direction due to interaction with the solar wind flow past the magnetosphere. During the substorm expansion phase the highly stretched tail magnetic field becomes rapidly more dipolar. The mechanism behind this explosive dipolarization remains one of GW-786034 tyrosianse inhibitor the major mysteries of magnetospheric physics. Explosive energy release occurs at many different scales, and therefore observation methods, theories and models need to account for that. In particular, rapid dipolarizations are not limited to substorms Vwf and include pseudobreakups and dipolarization fronts (DFs)?(e.g., Nakamura et?al. 2002b) within bursty bulk flows (BBFs)?(e.g., Ohtani et?al. 2004; Angelopoulos et?al. 2013) that occur on smaller period scales. The fast flows brake on method of the near-Earth area?(Shiokawa et?al. 1997) and the dipolarized flux tubes may exhibit oscillations around their equilibrium placement?(Chen and Wolf 1999; Kepko and Kivelson 1999), damped because of the dissipation in the ionosphere. The changeover from gradual to explosive development shows that a plasma instability reaches play. Nevertheless, understanding the mechanisms of the explosive magnetotail activity eventually requires a built-in investigation of the pre-onset circumstances for the explosive instability, its starting point mechanisms, settings of activity and their manifestations in GW-786034 tyrosianse inhibitor the magnetosphere and ionosphere. This all-encompassing watch of the explosive magnetic activity hasn’t however been reached by the scientific community. However, main strides have already been produced in modern times in knowledge of various bits GW-786034 tyrosianse inhibitor of this puzzle and, in some instances, their interactions. The purpose of this paper is certainly to synthesize the data upon this major analysis topic in magnetospheric physics since it stands today. In Sect.?2 we describe observations and types of the magnetotail development ahead of its explosive reconfigurations and the resulting features which may be critical for the next plasma instabilities. The development contains thinning of the tail current sheet (CS) right down to the kinetic level, much like the ion inertial duration may preclude the forming of such areas and therefore the advancement of reconnection in the IDMR regime. Simultaneously, you can expect the forming of brand-new X-lines in the trails of the B/I fingertips?(Pritchett and Coroniti 2013). Flapping motions represent global oscillations of the tail current sheet all together such as a flapping flag. Flapping waves propagate from the midnight meridian toward the dawn and dusk flanks, i.e., regular to the solar wind propagation path (Sergeev et?al. 2004, 2006). Flapping instabilities could be reproduced in a few magnetohydrodynamic (MHD)?(Korovinskiy et?al. 2013) and kinetic particle-in-cellular (PIC)?(Pritchett and Coroniti 2001; Sitnov et?al. 2014) simulations. By the end of Sect.?3, we describe ionospheric signatures of the magnetotail activity before, at and following its starting point. They consist of auroral streamers, beads, undulating arcs, equatorward and poleward boundary expansions, in addition to their substructures?(electronic.g. Motoba et?al. 2012; Nishimura et?al. 2016). In Sect.?4 we describe observations of magnetotail dynamics, simulations of magnetotail transients, micro-instabilities, some top features of particle distributions during explosive magnetotail activity and the damped oscillations of the dipolarized flux tubes in the near-Earth area. Mesoscale earthward transients generally referred to as BBFs possess sharpened (on the purchase of the.