Engineering-Physics Plasma Seminar Series Winter 2014

"Modeling Solar Proton Access to Geostationary Spacecraft with Geomagnetic Cutoffs", Brian T. Kress, Research Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College

January 28, 2014
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Location
Cummings Hall Room 200
Sponsored by
Thayer School of Engineering
Audience
Public
More information
Kathy DiAntonio

Solar energetic particle (SEP) cutoffs at geosynchronous orbit are sensitive to moderate geomagnetic activity and undergo daily variations due to the day-night asymmetry of the magnetosphere. At geosynchronous orbit, cutoff rigidity also has a large directional dependence, with the highest cutoff rigidity corresponding to ions arriving from magnetic east and lowest cutoff rigidity corresponding to ions incident from the west. Thus, during geomagnetically quiet periods, the SEP flux observed by an eastward facing particle detector is significantly lower than observed by a westward facing particle detector. During geomagnetically disturbed periods the cutoff is suppressed allowing SEPs access well inside of geosynchronous, so that the east-west SEP flux ratio approaches unity. Variations in the east-west SEP flux ratio observed by GOES Energetic Particle Sensors (EPS) have recently been reported by Rodriguez et al. [2010]. In NOAA's operational processing of EPS count rates into differential fluxes, the differential flux is treated as isotropic and flat over the energy width of the channel. To compare modeled SEP flux with GOES EPS observations, the anisotropy of the flux over the EPS energy range and field of view must be taken into account. A technique for making direct comparisons between GOES EPS observations and SEP flux modeled using numerically computed geomagnetic cutoffs will be presented. Initial results from a comparison between modeled and observed flux during the 6-11 December 2006 SEP event will also be presented. The modeled cutoffs reproduce the observed flux variations well but are in general too high.

Location
Cummings Hall Room 200
Sponsored by
Thayer School of Engineering
Audience
Public
More information
Kathy DiAntonio