Advanced Methods for Analyzing in-Situ Observations of Magnetic Reconnection

There is ample evidence for magnetic reconnection in the solar system, but it is a nontrivial task to visualize, to determine the proper approaches and frames to study, and in turn to elucidate the physical processes at work in reconnection regions from in-situ measurements of plasma particles and electromagnetic fields. Here an overview is given of a variety of single- and multi-spacecraft data analysis techniques that are key to revealing the context of in-situ observations of magnetic reconnection in space and for detecting and analyzing the diffusion regions where ions and/or electrons are demagnetized. We focus on recent advances in the era of the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, which has made electron-scale, multi-point measurements of magnetic reconnection in and around Earth's magnetosphere.

Science of the Van Allen Probes Science Operations Centers

The Van Allen Probes mission operations materialized through a distributed model in which operational responsibility was divided between the Mission Operations Center (MOC) and separate instrument specific SOCs. The sole MOC handled all aspects of telemetering and receiving tasks as well as certain scientifically relevant ancillary tasks. Each instrument science team developed individual instrument specific SOCs proficient in unique capabilities in support of science data acquisition, data processing, instrument performance, and tools for the instrument team scientists. In parallel activities, project scientists took on the task of providing a significant modeling tool base usable by the instrument science teams and the larger scientific community. With a mission as complex as Van Allen Probes, scientific inquiry occurred due to constant and significant collaboration between the SOCs and in concert with the project science team. Planned cross-instrument coordinated observations resulted in critical discoveries during the seven-year mission. Instrument cross-calibration activities elucidated a more seamless set of data products. Specific topics include post-launch changes and enhancements to the SOCs, discussion of coordination activities between the SOCs, SOC specific analysis software, modeling software provided by the Van Allen Probes project, and a section on lessons learned. One of the most significant lessons learned was the importance of the original decision to implement individual team SOCs providing timely and well-documented instrument data for the NASA Van Allen Probes Mission scientists and the larger magnetospheric and radiation belt scientific community.

Response of plasmaspheric configuration to substorms revealed by Chang'e 3

The Moon-based Extreme Ultraviolet Camera (EUVC) of the Chang'e 3 mission provides a global and instantaneous meridian view (side view) of the Earth's plasmasphere. The plasmasphere is one inner component of the whole magnetosphere, and the configuration of the plasmasphere is sensitive to magnetospheric activity (storms and substorms). However, the response of the plasmaspheric configuration to substorms is only partially understood, and the EUVC observations provide a good opportunity to investigate this issue. By reconstructing the global plasmaspheric configuration based on the EUVC images observed during 20-22 April 2014, we show that in the observing period, the plasmasphere had three bulges which were located at different geomagnetic longitudes. The inferred midnight transit times of the three bulges, using the rotation rate of the Earth, coincide with the expansion phase of three substorms, which implies a causal relationship between the substorms and the formation of the three bulges on the plasmasphere. Instead of leading to plasmaspheric erosion as geomagnetic storms do, substorms initiated on the nightside of the Earth cause local inflation of the plasmasphere in the midnight region.

Global storm time depletion of the outer electron belt

The outer radiation belt consists of relativistic (>0.5 MeV) electrons trapped on closed trajectories around Earth where the magnetic field is nearly dipolar. During increased geomagnetic activity, electron intensities in the belt can vary by orders of magnitude at different spatial and temporal scales. The main phase of geomagnetic storms often produces deep depletions of electron intensities over broad regions of the outer belt. Previous studies identified three possible processes that can contribute to the main-phase depletions: adiabatic inflation of electron drift orbits caused by the ring current growth, electron loss into the atmosphere, and electron escape through the magnetopause boundary. In this paper we investigate the relative importance of the adiabatic effect and magnetopause loss to the rapid depletion of the outer belt observed at the Van Allen Probes spacecraft during the main phase of 17 March 2013 storm. The intensities of >1 MeV electrons were depleted by more than an order of magnitude over the entire radial extent of the belt in less than 6 h after the sudden storm commencement. For the analysis we used three-dimensional test particle simulations of global evolution of the outer belt in the Tsyganenko-Sitnov (TS07D) magnetic field model with an inductive electric field. Comparison of the simulation results with electron measurements from the Magnetic Electron Ion Spectrometer experiment shows that magnetopause loss accounts for most of the observed depletion at L>5, while at lower L shells the depletion is adiabatic. Both magnetopause loss and the adiabatic effect are controlled by the change in global configuration of the magnetic field due to storm time development of the ring current; a simulation of electron evolution without a ring current produces a much weaker depletion.