Four-cell convection pattern in the ionosphere during a northward IMF (interplanetary magnetic field) was widely accepted until it was challenged by the distorted two-cell convection pattern proposed by Heppner and Maynard [1987>. We propose that a four-cell convection pattern, imposed on the magnetosphere by the solar wind, can be distorted into a wrapped two-cell pattern by the nonuniform and anisotropic conductance in the ionosphere. This is demonstrated by extending the magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling model [Kan et al., 1988> to the northward IMF condition. The resulting wrapped two-cell patterns for positive and negative IMF By are similar to the empirical two-cell patterns obtained by Heppner and Maynard [1987>. The distributions of the resulting field-aligned currents are also characteristically consistent with the observed current distributions, including the NBZ currents, during northward IMF. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1990