scholarly journals Impact of Solar Wind on the Earth Magnetosphere: Recent Progress in the Modeling of Ring Current and Radiation Belts

10.5772/37337 ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Buzulukova ◽  
Mei-Ching Fok ◽  
Alex Glocer
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eldho Midhun Babu ◽  
Hilde Nesse Tyssøy ◽  
Christine Smith-Johnsen ◽  
Ville Aleksi Maliniemi ◽  
Josephine Alessandra Salice ◽  
...  

<p>Energetic electron precipitation (EEP) from the plasma sheet and the radiation belts, can collide with gases in the atmosphere and deposit their energy. EEP increase the production of NOx and HOx, which will catalytically destroy stratospheric ozone, an important element of atmospheric dynamics. The particle precipitation also causes variation in the radiation belt population. Therefore, measurement of latitudinal extend of the precipitation boundaries is important in quantifying atmospheric effects of Sun-Earth interaction and threats to spacecrafts and astronauts in the Earth’s radiation belt. <br>This study uses measurements by MEPED detectors of six NOAA/POES and EUMETSAT/METOP satellites during the year 2010 to determine the latitudinal boundaries of EEP and its variability with geomagnetic activity and solar wind drivers. Variation of the boundaries with respect to different particle energies and magnetic local time is studied. The result will be a key element for constructing a model of EEP variability to be applied in atmosphere climate models.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shrikanth Kanekal ◽  
Yoshizumi Miyoshi

AbstractThe Earth’s magnetosphere is region that is carved out by the solar wind as it flows past and interacts with the terrestrial magnetic field. The inner magnetosphere is the region that contains the plasmasphere, ring current, and the radiation belts all co-located within about 6.6 Re, nominally taken to be bounding this region. This region is highly dynamic and is home to a variety of plasma waves and particle populations ranging in energy from a few eV to relativistic and ultra-relativistic electrons and ions. The interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) embedded in the solar wind via the process of magnetic reconnection at the sub-solar point sets up plasma convection and creates the magnetotail. Magnetic reconnection also occurs in the tail and is responsible for explosive phenomena known as substorms. Substorms inject low-energy particles into the inner magnetosphere and help generate and sustain plasma waves. Transients in the solar wind such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), co-rotating interaction regions (CIRs), and interplanetary shocks compress the magnetosphere resulting in geomagnetic storms, energization, and loss of energetic electrons in the outer radiation belt nad enhance the ring current, thereby driving the geomagnetic dynamics. The Specification and Prediction of the Coupled Inner-Magnetospheric Environment (SPeCIMEN) is one of the four elements of VarSITI (Variability of the Sun and Its Terrestrial Impact) program which seeks to quantitatively predict and specify the inner magnetospheric environment based on Sun/solar wind driving inputs. During the past 4 years, the SPeCIMEN project has brought together scientists and researchers from across the world and facilitated their efforts to achieve the project goal. This review provides an overview of some of the significant scientific advances in understanding the dynamical processes and their interconnectedness during the VarSITI era. Major space missions, with instrument suites providing in situ measurements, ground-based programs, progress in theory, and modeling are briefly discussed. Open outstanding questions and future directions of inner magnetospheric research are explored.


2021 ◽  
pp. 213-240
Author(s):  
Hannu E. J. Koskinen ◽  
Emilia K. J. Kilpua

AbstractIn this chapter we discuss the overall structure and dynamics of the electron belts and some of their peculiar features. We also consider the large-scale solar wind structures that drive geomagnetic storms and detail the specific responses of radiation belts on them. Numerous satellite observations have highlighted the strong variability of the outer electron belt and the slot region during the storms, and the energy and L-shell dependence of these variations. The belts can also experience great variations when interplanetary shocks or pressure pulses impact the Earth, even without a following storm sequence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazuo Shiokawa ◽  
Katya Georgieva

AbstractThe Sun is a variable active-dynamo star, emitting radiation in all wavelengths and solar-wind plasma to the interplanetary space. The Earth is immersed in this radiation and solar wind, showing various responses in geospace and atmosphere. This Sun–Earth connection variates in time scales from milli-seconds to millennia and beyond. The solar activity, which has a ~11-year periodicity, is gradually declining in recent three solar cycles, suggesting a possibility of a grand minimum in near future. VarSITI—variability of the Sun and its terrestrial impact—was the 5-year program of the scientific committee on solar-terrestrial physics (SCOSTEP) in 2014–2018, focusing on this variability of the Sun and its consequences on the Earth. This paper reviews some background of SCOSTEP and its past programs, achievements of the 5-year VarSITI program, and remaining outstanding questions after VarSITI.


2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 381-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Cai ◽  
S. Y. Ma ◽  
Y. L. Zhou

Abstract. Similar to the Dst index, the SYM-H index may also serve as an indicator of magnetic storm intensity, but having distinct advantage of higher time-resolution. In this study the NARX neural network has been used for the first time to predict SYM-H index from solar wind (SW) and IMF parameters. In total 73 time intervals of great storm events with IMF/SW data available from ACE satellite during 1998 to 2006 are used to establish the ANN model. Out of them, 67 are used to train the network and the other 6 samples for test. Additionally, the NARX prediction model is also validated using IMF/SW data from WIND satellite for 7 great storms during 1995–1997 and 2005, as well as for the July 2000 Bastille day storm and November 2001 superstorm using Geotail and OMNI data at 1 AU, respectively. Five interplanetary parameters of IMF Bz, By and total B components along with proton density and velocity of solar wind are used as the original external inputs of the neural network to predict the SYM-H index about one hour ahead. For the 6 test storms registered by ACE including two super-storms of min. SYM-H<−200 nT, the correlation coefficient between observed and NARX network predicted SYM-H is 0.95 as a whole, even as high as 0.95 and 0.98 with average relative variance of 13.2% and 7.4%, respectively, for the two super-storms. The prediction for the 7 storms with WIND data is also satisfactory, showing averaged correlation coefficient about 0.91 and RMSE of 14.2 nT. The newly developed NARX model shows much better capability than Elman network for SYM-H prediction, which can partly be attributed to a key feedback to the input layer from the output neuron with a suitable length (about 120 min). This feedback means that nearly real information of the ring current status is effectively directed to take part in the prediction of SYM-H index by ANN. The proper history length of the output-feedback may mainly reflect on average the characteristic time of ring current decay which involves various decay mechanisms with ion lifetimes from tens of minutes to tens of hours. The Elman network makes feedback from hidden layer to input only one step, which is of 5 min for SYM-H index in this work and thus insufficient to catch the characteristic time length.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Salohub ◽  
Jana Šafránková ◽  
Zdeněk Němeček

&lt;p&gt;The foreshock is a region filled with a turbulent plasma located upstream the Earth&amp;#8217;s bow shock where interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) lines are connected to the bow shock surface. In this region, ultra-low frequency (ULF) waves are generated due to the interaction of the solar wind plasma with particles reflected from the bow shock back into the solar wind. It is assumed that excited waves grow and they are convected through the solar wind/foreshock, thus the inner spacecraft (close to the bow shock) would observe larger wave amplitudes than the outer (far from the bow shock) spacecraft. The paper presents a statistical analysis of excited ULF fluctuations observed simultaneously by two closely separated THEMIS spacecraft orbiting the Moon under a nearly radial IMF. We found that ULF fluctuations (in the plasma rest frame) can be characterized as a mixture of transverse and compressional modes with different properties at both locations. We discuss the growth and/or damping of ULF waves during their propagation.&lt;/p&gt;


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiugang Zong

Abstract. Solar wind forcing, e.g. interplanetary shock and/or solar wind dynamic pressure pulses impact on the Earth’s magnetosphere manifests many fundamental important space physics phenomena including producing electromagnetic waves, plasma heating and energetic particle acceleration. This paper summarizes our present understanding of the magnetospheric response to solar wind forcing in the aspects of radiation belt electrons, ring current ions and plasmaspheric plasma physics based on in situ spacecraft measurements, ground-based magnetometer data, MHD and kinetic simulations. Magnetosphere response to solar wind forcing, is not just a “one-kick” scenario. It is found that after the impact of solar wind forcing on the Earth’s magnetosphere, plasma heating and energetic particle acceleration started nearly immediately and could last for a few hours. Even a small dynamic pressure change of interplanetary shock or solar wind pressure pulse can play a non-negligible role in magnetospheric physics. The impact leads to generate series kind of waves including poloidal mode ultra-low frequency (ULF) waves. The fast acceleration of energetic electrons in the radiation belt and energetic ions in the ring current region response to the impact usually contains two contributing steps: (1) the initial adiabatic acceleration due to the magnetospheric compression; (2) followed by the wave-particle resonant acceleration dominated by global or localized poloidal ULF waves excited at various L-shells. Generalized theory of drift and drift-bounce resonance with growth or decay localized ULF waves has been developed to explain in situ spacecraft observations. The wave related observational features like distorted energy spectrum, boomerang and fishbone pitch angle distributions of radiation belt electrons, ring current ions and plasmaspheric plasma can be explained in the frame work of this generalized theory. It is worthy to point out here that poloidal ULF waves are much more efficient to accelerate and modulate electrons (fundamental mode) in the radiation belt and charged ions (second harmonic) in the ring current region. The results presented in this paper can be widely used in solar wind interacting with other planets such as Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and other astrophysical objects with magnetic fields.


2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 1931-1938 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. V. Kozelov ◽  
T. V. Kozelova

Abstract. We propose a cellular automata model (CAM) to describe the substorm activity of the magnetospheric-ionospheric system. The state of each cell in the model is described by two numbers that correspond to the energy content in a region of the current sheet in the magnetospheric tail and to the conductivity of the ionospheric domain that is magnetically connected with this region. The driving force of the system is supposed to be provided by the solar wind that is convected along the two boundaries of the system. The energy flux inside is ensured by the penetration of the energy from the solar wind into the array of cells (magnetospheric tail) with a finite velocity. The third boundary (near to the Earth) is closed and the fourth boundary is opened, thereby modeling the flux far away from the tail. The energy dissipation in the system is quite similar to other CAM models, when the energy in a particular cell exceeds some pre-defined threshold, and the part of the energy excess is redistributed between the neighbouring cells. The second number attributed to each cell mimics ionospheric conductivity that can allow for a part of the energy to be shed on field-aligned currents. The feedback between "ionosphere" and "magnetospheric tail" is provided by the change in a part of the energy, which is redistributed in the tail when the threshold is surpassed. The control parameter of the model is the z-component of the interplanetary magnetic field (Bz IMF), "frozen" into the solar wind. To study the internal dynamics of the system at the beginning, this control parameter is taken to be constant. The dynamics of the system undergoes several bifurcations, when the constant varies from - 0.6 to - 6.0. The Bz IMF input results in the periodic transients (activation regions) and the inter-transient period decreases with the decrease of Bz. At the same time the onset of activations in the array shifts towards the "Earth". When the modulus of the Bz IMF exceeds some threshold value, the transition takes place from periodic to chaotic dynamics. In the second part of the work we have chosen as the source the real values of the z-component of the interplanetary magnetic field taken from satellite observations. We have shown that in this case the statistical properties of the transients reproduce the characteristic features observed by Lui et al. (2000).Key words. Magnetospheric physics (magnetosphere-ionosphere interactions) – Space plasma physics (nonlinear phenomena)


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