------------------------------------------------------------------ Minutes of the June 26, 1999 meeting of the GEM Steering Committee ------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Dick Wolf (wolf@alfven.rice.edu) Snowmass Village, Colorado. 8:00 am-12:05pm on 6/26/99 Attending: K. Baker, R. Clauer, B. Fraser, Y. Galperin, R. Greenwald, M. Hesse, M. Hudson, H. Kawano, L. Kepko, J. Kozyra, L. Lyons, T. Moretto, C. Russell, H. Singer, R. Smith, R. Wolf AGENCY REPORTS: Kile Baker gave a brief review of the situation at NSF. They expect to have be approximately $500K for GEM and $1M for the National Space Weather Program (shared by the various subdisciplines). Michael Hesse reviewed the status of NASA missions and programs. Howard Singer presented an update of the situation at NOAA. Howard had presented "Highlights of SEC Activities," during the agency reports earlier in the week. At the Steering Committee meeting, he emphasized that:=20 - The FY00 President's Budget includes a request for NOAA's share of the costs for GEOSTORMS, a solar sail satellite to monitor the solar wind at twice the L1 distance from Earth. - ACE real-time solar wind data is being received well over 90% of the time, thanks to many national and international partners. - Preparations are underway, again with many partners, for utilizing real-time data from the NASA IMAGE satellite to be launched late this year or early next. - Space Weather Week was once again a major success and included SEC's Users Conference as well as the Research to Operations Workshop that was jointly organized with NSF and AFRL. The next Space Weather Week will be May 1-5, 2000. - An FY01 initiative is in progress to provide additional support for GEOSTORMS, model transition, data dissemination, user education,and ionospheric products. WORKING GROUP ISSUES: Mary Hudson suggested a change in leadership of the Inner-Magnetosphere/Storms Campaign. She nominated Anthony Chan to take her place and reported that Anthony had agreed to accept the position if offered. The GEM Steering Committee approved that appointment. Mary also suggested that Dennis Gallagher be invited to replace Jim Horwitz. The Steering Committee approved his being offered the position. Chris Russell pointed out that the Tail-Substorm Campaign has been running a long time, and that it was time to formulate a plan for ramping it down. Larry Lyons pointed out that the working groups have new, young leadership, and that there is a lot of vitality. The schedule that was unanimously approved, after considerable discussion, was as follows: 2000. Full campaign with 9-10 workshop sessions. 2001. Begin rampdown with 8-9 sessions. 2002. Significant rampdown. Becomes substorm working group. Most sessions joint with other campaigns. 2003. All sessions joint with other campaigns. For the GGCM Campaign, Dick Wolf reported that he and Michael Hesse would like to step down as Coordinators and nominated Jimmy Raeder and Joachim Birn as replacements. Those nominations were approved by the GEM Steering Committee.=20 Dick also reported on a joint meeting of the GGCM Steering Committee, which is chaired by George Siscoe and is responsible for planning GGCM development, and the GGCM Program Committee, which is responsible for planning workshop sessions. There was no time for an adequate summary of the results of that meeting, but such a summary of it is attached as Appendix A. Dick reported that the joint group had discussed possibilities for changing this confusing two-committee structure and decided that it would be best to maintain it, as the duties of the GGCM Steering Committee are likely to increase in the next year. They suggested one change, however: that the Chair of the GGCM Steering Committee be a member of the Program Committee and the Coordinators of the GGCM Campaign be members of the Steering Committee. The GEM Steering Committee approved this slight modification of the committee structure. Three other items from the joint GGCM meeting that required a vote by the GEM Steering Committee were the following: 1. The Fall 1999 "GEM A/O" should again encourage use of Phase 1 products, including, in particular, use for developing educational software (tours of the magnetosphere). 2. The CCMC (Coordinated Community Modeling Center), which is being established at Goddard Space Flight Center, will take a key role in Phase 2 of GGCM, which consists of running models on demand. The Fall 1999 "GEM A/O" should encourage proposals to make codes ready for Phase-2 runs carried out at CCMC, by CCMC personnel. 3. It is recommended that, in view of the accomplishment of GGCM Phase 1 and the beginning of Phase 2, NSF be approached to increase funding for GGCM. Kile Baker said that he would be happy to receive a letter to that effect from the GEM Steering Committee. Dick Wolf will prepare that letter in collaboration with George Siscoe. SHORT TOPICS: Dick Wolf reported that Janet Luhmann, editor of JGR, was favorably impressed by the GEM tutorial lectures that she heard at the 1999 workshop and suggested that these tutorials be routinely written up for publication in JGR. The Steering Committee was happy with that idea and voted to encourage speakers to submit tutorials for publication in JGR. It was agreed that there would be a Mini-Workshop before the Fall AGU meeting. It should include a demonstration of Phase-1 products.=20 Jimmy Raeder suggested that a GEM task group be formed for the purpose of publicity and outreach. There was general agreement on that idea, and it was suggested that a session at the Fall MiniWorkshop be devoted to discussion of web issues and ideas for generating better publicity. It was agreed that the Fall "GEM A/O" should include an encouragement of proposals for the Inner-Magnetosphere/Storms Campaign, along with the GEM Phase-1 and Phase-2 items discussed above. It was agreed that Dick Wolf would circulate a draft of the "A/O" to the Steering Committee before submitting it to the GEM Messenger and SPA Newsletter. Roger Smith and Janet Kozyra reported on the GEM/CEDAR/SHINE Joint Workshop that was held in Boulder June 18 and 19. The sessions were successful on the whole, and there was agreement that more joint workshops would be a good idea. NEW MEMBERS: Given that an unusually large number of Steering Committee members were due to rotate off this year, it was agreed that Bob Clauer and Janet Kozyra should be asked to stay on another year to help provide continuity. Mary Hudson and Jimmy Raeder are overdue to rotate off the committee. It was agreed that Mary should be replaced by Joe Borovsky and Jimmy by John Lyon. Kile Baker, who, as Program Director at NSF makes appointments to the Steering Committee, subsequently extended invitations to Joe and John, and both accepted.=20 Larry Kepko transmitted the names of three possible nominees to be student representative on the Steering Committee. Kile Baker subsequently extended an invitation to Fred Hall, who accepted. The Steering Committee is grateful to Mary Hudson, Jimmy Raeder, and Larry Kepko for their conscientious and highly effective service to GEM. JUNE 2000 WORKSHOP: The Silvertree is already booked for Saturday, June 24 to Monday, June 26, 2000, complicating the choice of dates for next year's workshop. CEDAR has tentatively decided to meet June 26-30 in Boulder. The two leading choices for GEM were June 19-23 and June 27-July 1. In the latter case, the student tutorials would be Monday, June 26. The earlier dates impinge on the final exam period at the University of California and various public school systems. Choice of the later dates would make GEM simultaneous with CEDAR, which is awkward for people who wish to attend both. The result of a remarkably close vote, with the chairman voting to break a tie, was the choice of June 19-23, 2000 as the dates for the next GEM Workshop. STATUS OF REPORTS: Chris Russell reminded the Steering Committee and Campaign Coordinators that each Campaign is supposed to submit a report every year. Those reports are archived and form the permanent record of what GEM does. We are missing a lot of campaign annual reports from last year, and they should be submitted to Chris as soon as possible. (See Appendix C.) Work continues on the "five-year report" of GEM activities for 1991-97. Many sections are missing, but the group met during this year's GEM Workshop, and the responsible individuals have agreed to submit missing material by mid-July. GRADUATE STUDENT AFFAIRS: Larry Kepko reported on the graduate student tutorials. There seems to be no need for major changes in the format of these sessions. Because older members of the GEM community professed ignorance of how the tutorials were run, Larry provided a copy of the agenda for this year (Appendix C). Larry suggested that a graduate student be added to the planning process for each campaign, and the Steering Committee agreed. Actually, there was agreement on the same point last year, but nothing came of it. The campaign coordinators agreed to take action this year. Larry provided names of students who would be appropriate for each campaign. INTERNATIONAL REPORTS: Brian Fraser gave the report from Australia. He described the development of FedSat, a small 50 kg spacecraft. He also reported on a SuperDarn radar site that is planned for installation in Australia, designed primarily to look at the plasmapause. Yuri Galperin gave the report from Russia. Theresa Moretto, representing Europe, pointed out that, although a number of Europeans were playing active and vital roles in GEM, nevertheless the overall participation by the European space community was less than might be hoped. There was considerable discussion of the reason for relatively light participation. It was suggested that we should make an effort to invite speakers from Europe. Hedi Kawano presented a report from the Japanese space agency ISAS. GEOTAIL survived the long terrestrial eclipse (4 hours 11 minutes) from Feb 28 to Mar. 1, 1999, with no permanent damage. The next long eclipse will take place in Feb. 2000 (4 hours 29 minutes).=20 - The apogee is still about 30 Re, and the perigee is still about 9 Re. - In April 1999, the CPU of the magnetic field instrument went out of order, disabling the automatic gain range control. Thus, the gain range of the outboard (inboard) magnetometer is now fixed to plus/minus 64 (256) nT. It is unclear at the moment if this change will affect the processing of KeyParameter data and/or the data for DARTS (referred to below). - The magnetic field and plasma moment data of GEOTAIL, for the interval from Sep. 1, 1993 through Jun. 30, 1997, are open to public at the DARTS/GEOTAIL webpage (http://www.darts.isas.ac.jp/spdb/index.html). The data for later intervals are planned to be added to the webpage before the winter this year. In addition, some of E-t diagrams and distribution function data from the low energy plasma (LEP) experiment are also planned to be made open to public within one year from now. Concerning Akebono (Exos-D): - CD-ROMs including Akebono data are currently being distributed to the instrument and science team members of Akebono. If they turn out to be useful, ISAS could send copies to people upon request. The contact person is Dr. Ayako Matsuoka (matsuoka@stp.isas.ac.jp). - Akebono data are also planned to be made open to public at the DARTS webpage, but it could be long before it happens, because the number of people working for it is limited now. Rick Sydora could not attend the Workshop but submitted an informative report, which is attached as Appendix D. ---------------------------------------------------------------- APPENDIX A. MINUTES OF JOINT MEETING OF GGCM STEERING COMMITTEE AND GGCM PROGRAM COMMITTEE Prepared by George Siscoe Joint Committee met at lunch 6/24/99 Three Agenda Items: I. Organizational Issues II. Phase 1 Issues III. Phase 2 Issues I. Organizational Issues Current model; 2 independent committees with no formal interaction. Several different options discussed: 1. Same structure with formal interaction -- Steering Committee chair is a member of Campaign Program Committee. 2. Eliminate Steering Committee and let GEM Steering Committee assume its duties. 3. Make Program Committee and Steering Committee subcommittees of the GGCM Campaign. The Joint Committee adopted Model 1. II. Phase 1 Issues. The issues are: 1. Expanding Phase 1 product offerings; 2. Advertise Phase 1 products; 3. Phase-1 =3D GEM Nugget 4. Eos article Committee approved actions: 1. Encourage additions to 3 existing Phase 1 grant holders. Solicit additions to list of providers (e.g., Gombosi, Lyon-Fedder, MRC model outputs). 2. Advertise Phase 1 products through SPA and GEM Newsletters and in EOS article (below). Recommend to GEM Steering Committee that the next GEM a/o again encourage use of Phase 1 products including in particular the use to develop educational products (tours through the magnetosphere). GGCM web page will be constructed as part of the GEM web site. 3. Achievement of Phase 1 products is a GEM nugget. Send brief announcement to K. Baker. 4. Siscoe will write EOS article to celebrate the achievement of basic Phase 1 goal and to encourage (stimulate) use of Phase 1 products with education as an example. Clarify Phase 1 etc. structure and GGCM management structure. III. Phase 2 Issues: The issues are 1. Phase 2 implementation, 2. CCMC coordination, 3. Go for new money. 1. Agencies very interested in getting global code into Phase 2. NSF and NASA are willing to put up transition funds (~$50K to $70K) as perhaps add-ons to existing grants. All potential providers have been notified. Recommend to GEM Steering Committee that the next AO encourage proposals for Phase 2 implementations -- wording needed. 2. CCMC coordination: Approve transition of Run-on-demand function to CCMC for any or all of the global codes alluded to above. In Phase 2, the codes are not to be accessed by users -- just output. 3. Recommend to GEM Steering Committee to prepare argument to ask NSF for new money into the GEM program to implement Phase 2 operation -- the prime goal of the GEM program. APPENDIX B SCHEDULE FOR 1999 STUDENT TUTORIAL SESSION, SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 1999 Session I. Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling Session Chair: Ann Walker Magnetospheric plasma populations (Thanasis Boudouridis) Field-aligned currents (Trevor Garner) Ionospheric conductivities (Scott Thompson) Ionospheric response IMF changes..(Ann Walker) (lunch) Session II. Tail/Substorms Session chair: Janet Green Basic phenomenology (Fred Hall) Auroral observations (Janet Green) In situ observations and models (Larry Kepko) Session III. Inner Magnetosphere, Storms Session chair: Niescja Turner Storms vs. substorms (Janet Green) Ring current formation vs. decay..(Paul O'Brien) Observations during storms (Neiscja Turner) Radiation belts (Scot Elkington) Session IV: Plans Who will run the tutorials next year? Who will be our student reps at GEM (nominations)? Evaluations of this year's talks Adjouorn by 5 pm. APPENDIX C: GEM REPORTS Prepared by Chris Russell GEM Messenger: 46 issues in 1998 21 issues in 1999 (to date) GEMStone 1 issue in 1998 None in 1999 (Still collecting the reports) Received Reports of 1998 Meetings: Steering Committee Meetings (Snowmass and San Francisco) (Wolf) Joint Inner Magnetosphere/Storms and GGCM Modules Sessions (Snowmass) (Pritchett/Birn) Quantitative Substorm Models Working Group Meetings (Snowmass and San Francisco) (Drake/Lyon) Substorm Observations Working Group Meeting (Snowmass) (Moldwin/Ohtani) Missing Reports: Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling Sessions (Snowmass) (Hughes/Greenwald) Inner Magnetosphere/Storms Splinter Sessions: Plasmasphere and Ring Current Working Group (Snowmass) (Kozyra/Horwitz) Radiation Belts Working Group (Snowmass) (Reeves/Thorne) Strategy WG Meeting (San Francisco) (Kozyra/Reeves) GGCM Splinter Sessions: GGCM Implementation and Utilization (Snowmass) (Siscoe) Global MHD (Snowmass) (Raeder/Toffoleto) GGCM Science (Snowmass) (Hesse) GGCM (San Francisco) (Hesse/Wolf) Magnetotail/Substorms Splinter Sessions Substorm Challenge (San Francisco) (Raeder/Maynard) Substorm Observation (San Francisco) (Moldwin/Ohtani) GEM/CEDAR Joint Meeting Models for the New Millenium: A CEDAR/GEM Initiative (Snowmass) (Hagan/Wolf) APPENDIX D. CANADIAN REPORT Prepared by Rick Sydora Below is an update on the activities of 4 key elements to the Geospace Environment Modeling Program in Canada. I. Facility for Data Assimilation and Modeling (FDAM) This a Canadian Space Agency (CSA) funded effort under the CSA Long Term Space Plan (LTSP) III and represents an expansion of effort in the area of space weather activities. It is viewed as a national facility with international partners designed to fulfill tasks such as: - develop data assimilation methods and tools to integrate data streams from Canadian space weather superarrays - develop models which use Canadian data to specify conditions of the space environment - develop models and algorithms to simulate space weather processes - provide computational power for data visualization and model prototyping - represent Canada in international modeling collaborations There is a plan to develop predictors for magnetospheric and electrojet activity as well as continue computational research into substorm instability models. A more detailed review of the plans can be found in a report prepared by William Liu and Robert Rankin of the Univ. of Alberta and David Boteler, Geological Survey of Canada and the report represents a national consensus of the Canadian space science community . The web site is: http://ww2.dan.sp-agency.ca/SpaceWeather/intro.htm II. SuperDARN With regard to the high frequency radar system which studies the Earth's ionosphere, the Canadian Space Agency has approved funding for the radar to be built at Prince George. III. CANOPUS Array Future plans are evolving on CANOPUS 2. With present CSA budgets the only plan now is to soon upgrade the All Sky Imagers(ASI). The magnetometer and meridian scanning photometer arrays will remain essentially the same for the time being. I am appending the more complete description of CANOPUS prepared by Gordon Rostoker. IV. MultiMedia and Advanced Computing Infrastructure (MACI) This is a western Canadian initiative centered around the Univ. of Alberta and Univ. of Calgary, to expand current parallel supercomputing facilities. Existing facilities under the first phase of the project, last year, provided us with a 42-node SGI-Origin 2000 computer at the Univ. of Alberta and a 28-node DEC-alpha cluster at the Univ. of Calgary. It was just announced a few days ago that phase II of the project was fully funded under the Canadian Foundation for Innovation(CFI) federal program with provincial matching funds providing us with 7M (US), dollars over the next 2 years. Plans are to expand both computing facilities to 128 nodes. DETAILED REPORT ON THE CANADIAN SPACE AGENCY'S CANOPUS ARRAY (Prepared by Gordon Rostoker) CANOPUS is a thirteen station array of remote sensing platforms distributed over western Canada stretching from the west coast of Hudson Bay to near the Yukon-Alaska border and from the edge of the Arctic Ocean to close to the U.S.-Canada border. The locations of the sites are shown in the Figure. Each site is equipped with a three component ringcore fluxgate magnetometer and a 30 MHz riometer, with four of the sites also possessing multi-wavelength meridian scanning photometers and one site (Gillam) featuring a digital all-sky imager (ASI).The magnetometers have a dynamic range of (=3D/ -) 80,000 nT and a sensitivity of (1/40) nT. The primary wavelengths sampled by the meridian scanning photometers are 557.7 nm, 630.0 nm, 486.1 nm and 470.9 nm while the wavelengths sampled by the ASI are 557.7 nm and 630.0 nm. Data from the sites are transmitted through the Anik communications satellite to Ottawa and is made available in near real time to participating scientists. The magnetometer and riometer data are sampled at 8 Hz on site, however the values transmitted are 5-second averages for those parameters. The MPA operates at one scan from south to north and return every one minute, however high resolution data now available at some sites yields the data over the latitude range scanned every 30 s. The ASI produces images once every minute in its normal operating mode. The data can, of course, be sampled at a higher rate if one installs recorders at the campaign ports located at each site. The data are archived in Ottawa and made available to the nodes of the CANOPUS network and to selected CANOPUS Science Team members. A more detailed description of CANOPUS can be found in Rostoker et al.[1995]. CANOPUS data can be viewed in near real time data on the World Wide Web at http://www.dan.sp-agency.ca/www/canopus_home.html and interested researchers may gain access to limited amounts of CANOPUS data for use in their research through use of the order form on that web page. There is also a space weather nowcasting web page http://www.space .ualberta.ca/canopus.html where near real time estimates of auroral oval local and activity level can be found. The CANOPUS data are primarily used to pinpoint onset times and locations of magnetospheric disturbances, particularly substorms and propagating auroral features. This information is important for researchers studying data acquired by satellite borne detectors as these researchers cannot readily distinguish between spatial and temporal effects. The north-south Churchill line of seven stations at the eastern edge of=20 the array is capable of monitoring changes in the size of the polar cap and, as such, provides a means of monitoring changes in the energy stored in the earth's magnetotail. The combined use of measurements of hydrogen emissions (H beta at 486.1 nm) with the more conventional green and red auroral emissions provides proxy measurements of changes in plasma sheet topology. CANOPUS will continue to operate at least to the end of the 1999 in keeping with the commitment of the Canadian Space Agency to participate in the GGS/ISTP program. Now that we are near that time, the importance of continued ground based measurements in the study of the solar-terrestrial interaction are being evaluated as will the potential for CANOPUS type arrays to contribute to forecasts and nowcasts directed towards operational "Space Weather" needs. At this time expansion is being considered into eastern Canada to support space weather nowcasting activities and into western Canada to support the new Prince George SuperDARN radar presently under construction. As well it has been proposed to extend the Churchill line southward by the addition of a station near Minneapolis in order to provide better coverage of the equatorward edge of the auroral oval during geomagnetic storm activity. Finally, it should be noted that the University of Calgary is devoting a great deal of effort to developing a new generation of All-Sky Imagers, and it is hoped that several more CANOPUS sites will ultimately be equipped with ASI's to provide a better picture of the two dimensional structure of auroral activity. CANOPUS is presently fully funded by the Canadian Space Agency at a cost of approximately $1M (U.S.) per year. Long Term Space Plan funding appears to be in place to ensure continued operation of the next generation of ground-based arrays. SuperDARN will be funded, in part, through the successor to the CANOPUS program and existing CANOPUS funds have already been deployed to support the construction of the Prince George radar.=20 Data can be requested through the WWW CANOPUS home page, and are made available subject to the Rules of the Road described on that web page. The main rule is that, if CANOPUS data are used in a study, a CANOPUS Team member should have the opportunity to participate in that study so long as they can make a significant intellectual contribution. Whether or not a CANOPUS Team member participates, users of CANOPUS data are asked to acknowledge the Canadian Space Agency using a phrase "CANOPUS was constructed and is operated by the Canadian Space Agency." At the present time, all matters pertaining to interaction with the scientific community are managed by the Principal Investigator, Dr. Gordon Rostoker at the University of Alberta (rostoker@space.ualberta.ca). A new Principal Investigator for the Program will be selected by the end of 1999. Reference: Rostoker, G., J.C. Samson, F. Creutzberg, T.J. Hughes, D.R. McDiarmid, A.G. McNamara, A. Vallance Jones, D.D. Wallis and L.L. Cogger, CANOPUS- a ground-based instrument array for remote sensing the high latitude ionosphere during the ISTP/GGS program, Space Sci. Rev., 71 , 743, 1995.