Geomagnetic storms and solar eruptions: from Sun to Earth

Tuesday 31 Jan 2017, 09:30 → 15:30 CET

RMI meeting room (Space Pole)

Veronique Delouille (ROB)

This one-day workshop is dedicated to the modelling of drivers of geomagnetic storms and solar storms as well as their impact on the geospace environment. We will have invited speakers to talk about the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) developed at U. Michigan, the NASA ICON mission, as well as recent insight on geomagnetic induced currents.  Further, we will have talks on the propagation of CME and shocks throughout  the heliosphere, on how to predict solar storms, and on layers in the upward and downward current regions of the aurora. Measurements from the EPT/PROBA-V instrument in geomagnetic storms will also be discussed. We finally plan some time for open discussions.

Invited speakers:  Dr. Raluca Ilie (U. Illinois) and Prof. Farzad Kamalabadi (U. Illinois)

After each presentation, 5' Q&As are foreseen

09:30 → 10:00 Coffee & Welcome

10:00 → 10:40 Modeling Space Weather from the Sun to Earth and beyond

Developed at University of Michigan, the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) is a high-performance, flexible and robust computational framework designed for simulating the global space environment. SWMF integrates numerical models from numerous physics domains that can be customized to self-consistently simulate physical processes and coupled domains from the solar surface to the upper atmosphere of the Earth and extending to many planetary environments. This allows studying these complex, multi-scale space plasmas and their interactions on a system level, promoting a global understanding of the processes driving space weather, and advancing us toward physics-based prediction of the near-Earth environment. This presentation will illustrate recent advancements made within the SWMF, with a focus on the Geospace Suite, allowing for enhanced modeling and predictive capabilities, thanks to a suite of self-consistently coupled, first-principle models describing these interconnected and collocated plasma environments. The Geospace Suite consists of the Global Magnetosphere, Inner Magnetosphere, Ionosphere Electrodynamics and Polar Wind Outflow modules and is primarily used to describe and predict the conditions in the near- Earth environment.

Speaker: Dr Raluca Ilie (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Slides Ilie_SWMF.pdf

10:40 → 10:45 Q&As

10:45 → 11:05 Coronal Mass Ejections and Geomagnetic Storms

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are huge expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun into the interplanetary space. When interacting with the Earth's magnetosphere they can create major geomagnetic storms which can have a direct impact on our technological life. In this presentation a summary on the recent results regarding the propagation of CMEs and their impact on the magnetosphere will be given. The limitations of the actual observations and models used for forecasting the arrival time of the CMEs to the Earth will be also outlined.

Speaker: Dr Marilena Mierla (Royal Observatory of Belgium)

Slides Mierla_CME.pdf

11:05 → 11:10 Q&As

11:10 → 11:25 Coffee

11:25 → 12:05 Space Weather Effects in the Earth's Ionosphere and Below: An Overview of the NASA ICON Mission and Recent Insights on Geomagnetically Induced Currents

Speaker: Prof. Farzad Kamalabadi (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

12:05 → 12:10 Q&As

12:10 → 12:30 Double layers in the upward and downward current regions of the aurora

Speaker: Dr Herbert Gunell (Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy)

Slides Gunnel_DoubleLayers.pdf

12:30 → 12:35 Q&As

12:35 → 12:55 Geomagnetic storms: New results obtained with the "Energetic Particle Telescope" (EPT) along the LEO of PROBA-V.

With contributions from Benck, S. [2], Lopez-Rosson, G. [1] and Pierrard, V. [1][2] [1] BIRA-IASB [2] Center for Space Radiations, UCL, Louvain-La-Neuve Since May 2013, the Energetic Particle Telescope (EPT) is orbiting on a polar LEO at 820 km altitude, on board of PROBA-V (Cyamukungu et al., 2014 & Pierrard et al., 2014 respectively for the instrument description & preliminary results of the EPT). The fluxes of trapped electrons are measured by the EPT in 7 different energy channels ranging from 0.5 MeV to 20 MeV, We present the observations collected during the geomagnetic storm of 17 March 2015 (Dst: -231 nT), as well as during the two smaller storms in December 2015 (Dst = -45 nT & -150 nT). During the main phase of these storms, typical drop-outs are observed at low altitudes in all energy channels, in outer Radiation Belt drift shells (L > 4). Some of these drop-outs are followed by the penetration of relativistic electrons down to L = 2. The strong injection event of March 2015 filled up the slot region between the inner and outer Radiation Belts, for a period of a few days, as illustrated by the standard (L-t) maps that will be presented. These standard (L-t) maps also indicate that the outer belt electron fluxes were significantly enhanced after the geomagnetic storm, as compared to before the storm of March 2015. At the same time the MAGEIS/VAP-B detector, on board Van Allen Probes B flying along a GTO orbit, also observed enhanced relativistic electron fluxes after this storm event.Similar post-storm enhancements of energetic electron fluxes had been observed/reported earlier, but they had never been measured simultaneously (i) at low altitudes (along a LEO alike that of EPT/PROBA-V), and (ii) at large radial distances in the equatorial region (along a GTO orbit like that of MAGEIS/VAP-B). We will indicate how Betatron deceleration associated with the uplift of mirror points (during storm main-phases), and Betatron acceleration associated with a downward return of mirror points (during the recovery-phases) can explain the flux variations observed with the EPT. Indeed, the flux variations observed at low altitudes with the EPT are the consequence of Betatron deceleration and acceleration (also called Dst-effect) induced by the growth of the Ring Current, and by its subsequent decay during the slower recovery phase.The effect of concomitant non-resonant wave-particle interactions of whistler waves and ULF waves with trapped electrons during main-phases and recovery-phases, can account for enhancements of electron fluxes observed in the outer belt following some geomagnetic storm events. This is an alternative to the acceleration mechanism by resonant wave-particle interactions often invoked. Unlike the usual (B-L) flux maps, the EPT flux distributions are displayed in a new magnetic invariant coordinate system [Invariant-altitude (h_inv) & Magnetic-latitude (MagLat)] ; this coordinate system, which was introduced by Cabrera and Lemaire (2007), offers the key advantage to display more clearly and obviously low altitude distributions of trapped RB particles within McIlwain's reference dipole. Our (h_inv - MagLat) flux maps did enable us to uncover transient trapped electron populations during the main-phases of geomagnetic storms.

Speaker: Prof. Joseph Lemaire (BIRA-IASB, Université catholique de Louvain)

Slides Lemaire_EPT.pdf

12:55 → 13:00 Q&As

13:00 → 14:00 Lunch

14:00 → 14:30 CMEs and associated shock waves. Observations and Modelling with EUHFORIA.

Speaker: Dr Jasmina Magdalenic (Royal Observatory of Belgium)

14:30 → 14:35 Q&As

14:35 → 14:55 Predicting Geomagnetic Storms on the Basis of Solar Observations

Speaker: Dr Andrei Zhukov (Royal Observatory of Belgium)

Slides Zhukov_Bz_prediction.pdf

14:55 → 15:00 Q&As

15:00 → 15:30 Final Discussions