Space Environment Modeling Group

In the resent study, Bernhard Haas and co-authors found that the enhancement of the electron ring current during the geomagnetic storms is challenging to reproduce in the modeling, and it is attributed to a new missing scattering processes.

Charged particles from space are captured by the Earth’s magnetic field. They then flow in a circular path around the Earth, forming what is known as a ring current. Knowledge of its dynamics is important because it in turn affects the Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere and can create dangerous conditions for satellites. In particular, the behaviour during geomagnetic storms caused by increased solar activity is not yet fully understood. Models used for this purpose have so far systematically overestimated the strength of the ring current. Researchers led by Bernhard Haas and Yuri Shprits from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences have shown this in a study published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. They analysed the particle trajectories during geomagnetic storms and identified a hitherto unrecognised particle loss process through scattering by so-called plasma waves.

See full article at GFZ website.

In a recent study, Allison et al. found that depletions in plasma allowed electrons to accelerate to ultra-relativistic energies. The study used data from the Van Allen Probes as well as machine learning techniques to make these findings, which were published in Space Advances.

“This study shows that electrons in the Earth’s radiation belt can be promptly accelerated locally to ultra-relativistic energies, if the conditions of the plasma environment — plasma waves and temporarily low plasma density — are right. The particles can be regarded as surfing on plasma waves. In regions of extremely low plasma density they can just take a lot of energy from plasma waves. Similar mechanisms may be at work in the magnetospheres of the outer planets such as Jupiter or Saturn and in other astrophysical objects,” — Yuri Shprits

Check out press coverage in Science Daily and on the GFZ website and read the full paper here.

EU Horizon 2020 project PAGER started. The kick-off meeting held in Potsdam at GFZ.

We’re excited to get our EU Horizon2020 project PAGER started! Kick-off meeting @GFZ_Potsdam pic.twitter.com/GNujSchUmT

— spacepager (@spacepager) January 28, 2020

The PAGER project will combine models from the Sun to the Earth’s inner magnetosphere + ensembles of physics-based & ML models to make predictions of space weather conditions 1-2 days in advance

In the vicinity of Europa and Ganymede, that respectively have induced and internal magnetic fields, chorus wave power is significantly increased. The observed enhancements are persistent and exceed median values of wave activity by up to 6 orders of magnitude for Ganymede. Produced waves may have a pronounced effect on the acceleration and loss of particles in the Jovian magnetosphere and other astrophysical objects. The generated waves are capable of significantly modifying the energetic particle environment, accelerating particles to very high energies, or producing depletions in phase space density. Observations of Jupiter’s magnetosphere provide a unique opportunity to observe how objects with an internal magnetic field can interact with particles trapped in magnetic fields of larger scale objects.

(more…)

A geomagnetic storm on January 17, 2013, provided unique observations that finally resolved a long-standing scientific problem. (more…)

Applied Mathematician Dr. Tatiana Podladchikova was awarded the International Alexander Chizhevsky Medal at the 12th European Space Weather Week, for major results in space weather.

(more…)