Recently, the 25 most downloaded Nature Communications articles had been released across 7 big subject area collections published in 2021. The 7 big subject areas are Health Sciences, SARS-CoV-2, Life and Biological Sciences, Social Sciences and Human Behaviour, Chemistry and Materials Sciences, Physics, and Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences. Professor Zhang Qinghe's research group, from the School of Space Science and Physics and Institute of Space Sciences, published an article entitled "A space hurricane over the Earth’s polar ionosphere" in Nature Communications in Feb. 2021 (Zhang et al., Nat. Commun., 2021). This article was selected both as the top 25 physics articles and Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences Articles, which ranked 4^thand 5^th, respectively.

This article was the first time to show the discovery of a class of structures similar to typhoons or hurricanes in the upper atmosphere of the Earth's polar regions, and the structures have been named "space hurricanes". The simulations reproduce the structures, reveal its formation mechanism, provide a new way of solar energy transmission, and update the understanding of solar wind-magnetosphere coupling. After the article was published, it was selected by Nature as a research highlight and reported under the title "The first known space hurricane pours 'rain". It was selected as a research highlight (Nugget) by the portal of THEMIS-ARTEMIS satellite and posted on its home page for a long time. It has been reported by thousands of media at home and abroad, including Chinese Science News, BBC Science Focus magazine, National Geographic Magazine, AGU EOS, and it was posted on Wikipedia as an independent entry.