Major storms of 2000-2005 as observed by the Radio Plasma Imager Patricia Briea, Ivan Galkin, Bodo Reinisch, Paul Song, and James Green The Radio Plasma Imager (RPI) on NASAÕs IMAGE mission has been and is continuously monitoring plasma wave natural emissions in the magnetosphere and plasmasphere of the Earth using high-sensitivity passive-mode reception between 3 and 1200 kHz. The 14.2-hour period elliptical orbit of the IMAGE spacecraft with the perigee at ~1200 km and the apogee altitude at 7.2 RE gives an excellent opportunity to record a variety of signatures pertaining to the processes in the solar-terrestrial system. Even outside the plasmasphere, the RPI can capture detailed records of the solar type III radio bursts often associated with elevated explosive activities on the Sun such as the coronal mass ejections (CME) that often accompany the solar flares. When inside the plasmasphere, RPI observes the whistler-mode radiations some of which are resulted from the dynamics of the energetic particle streams via the particle-wave interaction mechanism. Finally, the passive mode RPI spectrograms can be inspected for signatures of the upper-hybrid resonance and gyrofrequency harmonics, providing a means of obtaining local measurements of the plasma density and the EarthÕs magnetic field strength along the orbit. Thus, the RPI passive reception mode provides within a single frame of observation a set of identifiable signatures belonging to important events associated with the magnetospheric storm activity in the Sun-Earth system. We have developed a sonification technique that translates the RPI spectrograms to sound indicating intensity and frequency range of the received radiation. This paper presents several case studies of the major storms during 2000-2005 observed by the RPI instrument, including the Tax Day storm of 2002, the Halloween storm of 2003, the Bastille Day storm of 2000, and a recent sequence of solar flares in September 2005. The identified RPI signatures recorded during these events are compared to observations made by other instruments. _______________ Presented at the URSI National Radio Science Meeting, University of Colorado at Boulder, January 4-7, 2006