Outstanding Issues and Future Directions of Inner Magnetospheric Research (Invited)

Physics – Plasma Physics

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

[2400] Ionosphere, [2700] Magnetospheric Physics, [7800] Space Plasma Physics, [7900] Space Weather

Scientific paper

Several research areas of the inner magnetosphere and ionosphere (MI) system have reached a state, where the coupling mechanisms can no longer be treated as boundary conditions or ad-hoc assumptions in our physical models. It is nothing new that our community has become increasingly aware of the necessity to use global measurements from multiple observation platforms and missions, in order to understand both the system as a whole as well as its individual subsystems. In this presentation we briefly review the current status and outstanding issues of inner MI research. We attempt to establish a working definition of the term "Systems Approach", then present observational tools and techniques that enable such an approach. Physical modeling plays a central role not only in understanding the mechanisms at work, but also in determining the key quantities to be measured. We conclude by discussing questions relevant to future directions. Are there new techniques that need more attention? Should multi-platform observations be included as a default component already at the mission-level in the future? Is solar minimum uninteresting from an MI perspective? Should we actively compare to magnetospheres of other planets? Examples of outstanding issues in inner MI research include the circulation of ionospheric plasma from low to high latitudes and its escape to the magnetosphere, where it is energized by magnetospheric processes and becomes a part of the plasma pressure that in turn affects the ionospheric and magnetospheric electric field. The electric field, in turn, plays a controlling role in the transport of both magnetospheric and ionospheric plasma, which is intimately linked with ionospheric conductance. The conductance, in turn, is controlled by thermospheric chemistry coupled with plasma flow and heating and magnetospheric precipitation and Joule heating. Several techniques have emerged as important tools: auroral imaging, inversions of ENA images to retrieve the plasma pressure distribution and the associated currents (example: IMAGE and stereo imaging from TWINS), EUV imaging to retrieve the global plasmaspheric dynamics (example: IMAGE), magnetospheric magnetic field measurements to reconstruct the global dynamics of the magnetic field and current systems (example: TS07d), global networks of radar measurements of ionospheric flows (example: superDarn), tomographic inversion of GPS signal measurements to reconstruct 3D electron density profiles (example: COSMIC), low-altitude magnetic field measurements to derive maps of field-aligned currents (example: Iridium and AMPERE).

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Outstanding Issues and Future Directions of Inner Magnetospheric Research (Invited) does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Outstanding Issues and Future Directions of Inner Magnetospheric Research (Invited), we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Outstanding Issues and Future Directions of Inner Magnetospheric Research (Invited) will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1877583

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.