Physics
Scientific paper
May 2002
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002agusmsm41c..08k&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2002, abstract #SM41C-08
Physics
2494 Instruments And Techniques, 2407 Auroral Ionosphere (2704), 2409 Current Systems (2708), 2431 Ionosphere/Magnetosphere Interactions (2736), 2447 Modeling And Forecasting
Scientific paper
The engineering magnetometers aboard the 70+ Iridium satellites arranged in six equally spaced polar orbital planes provide a unique database for determination of global field-aligned currents [Waters et al., 2001]. In this study we compare these field-aligned currents with MHD simulation results to quantitatively evaluate the MHD results in a global way. We report analysis for three events of steady interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) orientation, stable to within 25o of the average direction. The start times of these intervals are August~11, 1999 (22:36), November~23, 1999 (07:15), and August~10, 2000 (22:11), and the events extend between eight and ten hours in duration. The IMF clock angles for the events are -124o, 125o, and 160o, respectively, and the IMF cone angles for all three intervals are within 25o of 90o. The solar wind flow speeds for the events averages 430, 453, and 386~km/s, and the mean solar wind densities are 3.7, 3.6, and 12.0 {cm}-3, respectively. The field aligned current densities in the MHD simulations are evaluated at the inner simulation boundary (2~Re) and mapped on dipole field lines to ionospheric altitudes. Preliminary results show a reasonably good agreement in the morphology of the Region-1 currents, although the field-aligned currents of the MHD simulations are displaced somewhat poleward with respect to the Iridium patterns. DMSP particle source identifications are used to compare source regions of Region 1 in the observed FAC maps with those in the MHD simulations. The Region-2 currents show expectedly larger differences since ring current drift physics necessary to drive these currents in the magnetosphere is not implemented in the MHD evaluations. The ratio between Region~1 and Region~2 is used to measure the relative deficit of Region-2 currents in the MHD simulation results.
Anderson Benjamin J.
Goodrich Charles Carson
Korth Haje
Merkine V. G.
Waters Colin L.
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