Understanding and Predicting the Space Weather Impact of Extreme Solar Storms

Understanding and Predicting the Space Weather Impact of Extreme Solar Storms

Team PI

PI Reference
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Tim Fuller-Rowell

Who Will Do What:

  1. CIRES will be responsible for the I-T modeling and response.

  2. UNH will be responsible for the magnetospheric modeling, convection, saturation effects, polar cap boundary specification.

  3. NRL will be responsible for evaluating the impact of the I-T response on orbit prediction.

  4. SWPC will assist with the impact of the I-T response on communications and navigation.

  5. All members of the team will interact to support the overall goal and objectives.

What Are Our Expectations:

All our team have interacted extensively in the past on modeling the M-I-T system. The PI will guide the research activities, and consult with team members on decisions and the decision making process when collective decisions are required.  

What Are Our Objectives:

  • Understand how the Geospace system will respond to an extreme space weather event, and given that understanding,

  • Determine the likely impacts that changes in neutral density and winds will have on the satellite drag, orbit predictions, and collision avoidance; and the likely impacts that changes in ionospheric density and structure will have on satellite and ground-based communications, geo-location, positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT).

What Are Our Goals:

The proposed study will use sophisticated coupled physical models of the magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere to investigate, understand, and estimate a realistic response of the Geospace system to a Carrington-level extreme solar eruption. The study will also use quantify the possible impact on operational systems. The goal is to answer the following science questions:

  • How does the ionospheric plasma redistribution respond to the combination of the overly expanded magnetospheric convection to mid latitudes and the strong penetration electric field to low latitudes?

  • How does the thermospheric circulation and neutral composition respond to Joule heating expanded well into mid latitudes, rather than the typical location at higher latitudes during storms?

  • Does the disturbance dynamo still play a significant role given the magnitude and possible dominance of magnetospheric convection?

  • How severe is plasmasphere erosion in response to the polar cap boundary and plasma escape well into mid latitudes?

  • Do both positive and negative phases both still have a significant contribution in the response of the ionospheric plasma density and total electron content?

  • What is the level of thermal expansion and increase of neutral, and plasma density, at high altitude contributing to satellite drag?

  • Does the auroral NO production and radiative cooling cause the upper atmosphere expansion to saturate?

Addition science questions with addition of Guest PI Jimmy Raeder, UNH

  • How far does the polar cap expand, and how far does the auroral oval shift equatorward, and what process limits the expansion?

  • Does the combined Geospace system respond linearly to increasing strength of solar wind drivers, and in particular, do the magnetosphere inputs to the IT system ever completely saturate, and if so what is the saturation mechanism?

Impacts on Operational Systems:

  • How do changes in ionospheric plasma density, TEC, and irregularities impact satellite communications and navigation?

  • What are possible perigee height changes due to the likely neutral density enhancement, and what part of the catalog would be de-orbited?

Addition impacts on operational systems with addition of Guest PI Jimmy Raeder, UNH

  • How would in-track orbit uncertainties grow, and what are potential impacts on impact collision avoidance?

 

What Are Our Milestones:

Year 1: Replace the ionosphere in CTIPe with IPE. Simulate Bastille Day storm with stand-alone CTIPe/IPE with Weimer electric field and fixed polar cap boundary. Establish procedure to add penetration electric fields. Establish availability and access to validation data for Bastille Day event. Develop robust extrapolations of empirical thermosphere models to extreme solar storm conditions, and estimate the range of possible density responses.

Year 2: Include penetration electric field in CTIPe/IPE. Perform simulation of CTIPe/IPE with Bastille Day forcing scaled to match a Carrington event or forcing during July 2012 STEREO event and compare with Bastille Day response. Examine linearity in the response. Compare IPE/CTIPe simulations with data when available, including neutral density and composition, plasma density from ionosondes, and TEC from ground-based GNSS and space-based radio occultation (e.g., COSMIC).

Year 3: Include IPE time-dependent polar cap boundary from Weimer or available magnetospheric simulations. Perform coupled simulations with the full range of extreme CME events. Perform simulations for all five superstorms in recent history, and validate against available data. Examine non-linear dependence in response. Continue to update plasma density and neutral density and wind calculations and determine system impacts. Compute resulting perigee height changes for operational satellites and for the distribution of debris orbits.

Year 4: Determine which part of the space catalog would be de-orbited by an extreme event. Evaluate the impact of changes in ionospheric plasma density, TEC, and irregularities on communication outages and navigation positioning. Develop robust extrapolations of NRLMSIS and GAMDM to extreme solar storm conditions.

COIs

Co-PI or Collaborator Reference

Naomi Maruyama

Mariangel Fedrizzi

Tzu-Wei Fang

Jimmy Raeder

John Emmert

  1. CU Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) (PI: Fuller-Rowell; Co-Is: Maruyama, Fedrizzi, Fang; Collaborabor: Viereck)

  2. University of New Hampshire (Raeder, Guest PI)

  3. Naval Research Laboratory (Institutional PI: Emmert)

  4. NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (Collaborator: Codrescu)

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