Tuesday 14 January 2025 | 11 - 12 GMT
Sarah Bentley (Northumbria University)
Title:
How do fundamental modelling choices affect radial diffusion in Earth’s Radiation Belts?
Abstract:
Earth’s radiation belts contain high energy, geomagnetically trapped charged particles that are responsible for several space weather hazards. Using conserved quantities associated with the motion of these particles, the radiation belts can be modelled through a basic diffusion equation. On longer timescales, this can be approximated as simply a 1d diffusion equation, representing the changing drift orbit of the electrons as they interact with electromagnetic fields.
Ensemble modelling - running a model many times to represent variations in the underlying physics - is increasingly being adopted by the space physics community to capture the uncertainty, which can be inherent to the system or due to observations or models. But before we can interpret the physics from an ensemble, we must understand what variation arises solely from the modelling method. We investigate the role of fundamental model choices to the evolution of the system, including the details of an initial enhancement, the location of the plasmapause and the outer boundary size and condition.
Our first key result suggests that because the amount of diffusion changes depending on where you are in the modelling domain, the size of the domain affects the way the system evolves. Both the location of the outer boundary, and the numerical condition used there, change the way in which the system evolves, raising questions about operational choices today. The second result we will highlight allows us to quantify how model components contribute to the evolution of the system. Surprisingly, we find that the gradient of the phase space density (PSD) contributes more to the evolution of the system than the diffusion coefficient DLL. This contradicts our current understanding and has consequences whether correct or incorrect.
Previous MIST online seminars are recorded and available on the MIST YouTube channel .
Links to individual seminars are in the table below.
Date |
Speaker |
Title (Click for Link to Seminar) |
03 December 2024 |
Tim Horbury (Imperial College London) |
The IMAP mission: overview and prospects for science and space weather |
04 November 2024 |
John Plane (School of Chemistry, University of Leeds) |
Effects of Cosmic Dust in the Atmospheres of Earth and Venus |
01 October 2024 |
Jesse Coburn (MSSL, UCL) |
|
03 September 2024 |
Rosie Johnson (Aberystwyth University) |
|
06 August 2024 |
Alina Bendt (University of Warwick) |
|
06 August 2024 |
Ruoyan Wang (University of Leicester) |
Probing the Jovian Ionosphere and Thermosphere via K-band Infrared Spectroscopy |
04 June 2024 |
Rebecca Smethurst (University of Oxford) |
“Tricking” social media recommendation algorithms to engage the “unreachable” with astrophysics |
07 May 2024 |
Andrew Wright (University of St Andrews) |
Observations and Simulations of 3D Field Line Resonances in the Earth's Magnetosphere |
16 April 2024 |
Christian Lao (MSSL, UCL) |
|
05 March 2024 |
Sophia Zomerdijk-Russell (Imperial College London) |
Investigating Magnetospheric Dynamics Driven by the Solar Wind at Mercury |
05 March 2024 |
Patrik Krcelic (University of Southampton) |
The electrodynamics of fine scale aurora and associated Joule heating |
06 Feb 2024 |
Heli Hietala (Queen Mary University London) |
Shock generated transient structures in Solar System environments |
16 Jan 2024 |
Jonny Rae (Northumbria University) |
International Cooperation and the European Heliospheric Community |
05 Dec 2023 |
Suzie Imber (University of Leicester) |
|
07 Nov 2023 |
Catherine Regan (MSSL, UCL) |
|
07 Nov 2023 |
Samuel Fielding (University of Edinburgh) |
Space Weather: trying to improve ground level magnetic field perturbation prediction |
03 Oct 2023 |
John Plane (University of Leeds) |
|
05 Sep 2023 |
Andrea Larosa (QMUL) |
The relation between magnetic switchbacks and turbulence in the inner heliosphere |
01 Aug 2023 |
Sheila Kanani (Royal Astronomical Society) |
|
11 Jul 2023 |
Harriet Turner (University of Reading) |
|
11 Jul 2023 |
Cameron Patterson (Lancaster University) |
|
06 Jun 2023 |
Charlotte Goetz (Northumbria University) |
|
02 May 2023 |
Mark Lester (University of Leicester) |
Sounding the Martian Ionosphere: New Insights from Mars Express and other satellites at Mars |
07 Mar 2023 |
Audrey Schillings (University of Leicester) |
|
17 Feb 2023 |
Alexandra Fogg (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) |
Investigating the effects of solar wind pressure pulses on the terrestrial magnetosphere |
01 Nov 2022 |
Ingrid Cnossen (British Antarctic Survey) |
Climate of the upper atmosphere: Long-term change and North-South asymmetries |
04 Oct 2022 |
Alan Wood (University of Birmingham) |
|
06 Sept 2022 |
Andrew Kavanagh (British Antarctic Survey) |
Simultaneous multi-scale measurements of Ion Drift in the Earth's Auroral Ionosphere |
07 June 2022 |
Maria-Theresia Walach (Lancaster University) |
|
03 May 2022 |
Chris Owen (MSSL/UCL) |
Solar Orbiter – Progress to date and prospects going forward. |
05 April 2022 |
Henrik Melin (University of Leicester) |
Aeronomy of the giant planets from over 30 years of H3+ observations |
01 February 2022 |
Daniel Whiter (University of Southampton) |
|
07 December 2021 |
Adam Masters (Imperial College London) |
A More Viscous-Like Solar Wind Interaction With All the Giant Planets |
02 November 2021 |
Sandra Chapman (University of Warwick) |
‘Data analytics’ approaches to space weather in space and time |
05 October 2021 |
Laura Berčič (Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL) |
Physical mechanisms related to the sunward electron deficit in the solar wind |
07 September 2021 |
Beatriz Sánchez-Cano (University of Leicester) |
Mars’ Space Weather: the role of the ionosphere for (near) unmagnetised planets |
06 July 2021 |
Graziella Branduardi-Raymont (University College London) |
|
01 June 2021 |
Julia Stawarz (Imperial College London) |
Turbulence and Magnetic Reconnection in Space Plasmas: Insights from the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission |
04 May 2021 |
Emma E. Woodfield (British Antarctic Survey) |
|
13 April 2021 |
David Themens (University of Birmingham) |
Data first, physics later: How user needs have framed the development of E-CHAIM |
02 March 2021 |
Martin Archer (Imperial College London) |
Researchers and public engagement: What role should I play to make a real difference? |
02 February 2021 |
Luke Barnard (University of Reading) |
Coronal Mass Ejection modelling and prediction with Heliospheric Imagers |
12 January 2021 |
Gabrielle Provan (University of Leicester) |
Magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling at Saturn and Jupiter in the era of Juno and Cassini |
01 December 2020 |
Mike Lockwood (University of Reading) |
Semi-annual and Universal Time variations in the magnetosphere |
03 November 2020 |
Clare Watt (Northumbria University) |
|
06 October 2020 |
Imogen Gingell (University of Southampton) |
|
01 September 2020 |
Caitriona Jackman (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) |
|
04 August 2020 |
Jim Wild (Lancaster University) |
|
14 July 2020 |
Daniel Verscharen (Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL) |
Kinetic physics, collisions, and turbulence in the solar wind: a multi-scale perspective |