Plasmaspheric refilling after geomagnetic storms is studied using a model in which the ion temperature anisotropy (TAN) is allowed to evolve self-consistently with the interhemispheric plasma flow. The refilling processes predicted from this TAN model and those from a model based on the assumption of temperature isotropy (TISO) are compared. TISO model predicts that a flux tube with L=4 undergoes a substantial refilling in about 12 hours after a severe depletion and during this time the flows from the conjugate ionospheres remain supersonic with a flux ~2¿108 cm-2 s-1. The above refilling time is too short compared to observed refilling times. The TAN model predicts much longer refilling time divided in two stages; during the early stage, the flows from the conjugate ionospheres are supersonic, and it is characterized by interhemispheric plasma exchange, shock formations and their propagations like in the TISO model. But in the TAN model, the supersonic flows last only over a few hours (T⊥. This anisotropy causes a downward force, which balances the upward electric and pressure forces on ions keeping the flux tube depleted. The ensuing second stage starts when the temperature anisotropy begins to relax due to Coulomb collisions at high latitudes. In this stage of the refilling the equatorial density is seen to increase at a rate <15 cm-3/day. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1991