Аннотация:The last decade complexity in magnetosphere-ionosphere plasma has been discussed in numerous papers. The most popular approaches are based on turbulence or/and self-organized criticality paradigms. However, there is no clear evidence that the dynamics during the events analyzed represents organization, and not disorganization. The problem is that the magnetosphere-ionosphere system is an open, non-equilibrium system; therefore classical thermodynamics is not directly applicable. Here we use an approach based on the S-theorem by Yu. L. Klimontovich. This approach allows us to compare the order which characterizes the current (non equilibrium) state of the system to experimental data. The considered characteristic is an analogy of entropy extended to non-equilibrium states. Television observations of the auroral structure during substorm activation at the Barentsburg observatory (Svalbard) have been used as a data set. Dependence of the order on the spatial scale has been analyzed. Our main finding is that the order of the aurora increases during substorm activations.