*************************** ** THE GEM MESSENGER ** *************************** Volume 5, Number 40 December 20, 1995 ****************************************************************************** Brief Report on the Fall 1995 NSF/GEM Mini-Workshop ****************************************************************************** Harlan E. Spence GEM Meetings Coordinator Boston University Center for Space Physics The Fall 1995 National Science Foundation (NSF) Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) mini-workshop was held on Sunday, December 10, 1995, in San Francisco, CA. Each year GEM convenes this one-half-day mini-workshop on the Sunday preceding the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, as a supplement to the full one-week summer GEM workshop held traditionally at the end of June in Snowmass, CO. The Fall mini-workshop is designed primarily for those GEM working groups requiring discussions and/or planning on a semi-annual basis. Over 75 scientists participated in this year's mini-workshop which lasted from 1:00 to 7:00pm at the Moscone Center. The NSF/GEM program is a phased, multi-campaign effort, now in its fifth year of funding. Each of the active and planned campaigns is aimed at understanding and describing the physics of a particular region of geospace by: coordinating the collection and analysis of both ground- and space-based measurements relevant to that region; developing quantitative physical or empirical models of these regions; and testing, assessing, and refining the models. Each region-specific campaign interacts with the Geospace General Circulation Model (GGCM) campaign, which is collecting campaign models and synthesizing them into a modularized, global model. At present, the GEM program has two active region-specific campaigns: the Boundary Layer (BL) campaign on the physics of the magnetopause and its associated boundary layers; and the Tail/Substorm (TS) campaign on the physics of the geomagnetic tail under both geomagnetically quiescent and active conditions. Each of the three ongoing campaigns is comprised of three working groups. Each working group has a distinct task toward the campaign goal and whose focus is provided either by science topic or technique. Three of the possible nine working groups (WGs) met this year and their synopses follow: --- The BL WG#1 ("Reconnection Electric Field and Magnetopause Boundary Normal Magnetic Field") is co-chaired by Lawrence Lyons of The Aerospace Corporation and Alan Rodger of the British Antarctic Survey. This working group is exploring the ionospheric and magnetospheric signatures of the boundary between open and closed magnetic field lines using a variety of coordinated data sources. The BL WG#1 agenda included: brief progress reports of ongoing projects since the summer 1995 Snowmass meeting; identification of candidate study periods from recently acquired data; planning for the 1996 Snowmass meeting; and definition of future campaign dates. --- The BL WG#3 ("Current Systems and Mapping") is co-chaired by Eigil Friis-Christensen of the Danish Meterological Institute and Nancy Crooker of Boston University. This working group is studying high-magnetic-latitude current systems and their mapping from the ionosphere to the magnetosphere. The BL WG#3 agenda was mainly programmatic, including: discussion of working group objectives; assessment of progress toward achieving goals; and exploration of future working group directions. --- The TS WG#1 ("Substorm Onset Signatures: Identification, Location, and Timing") is co-chaired by Nelson Maynard of Mission Research and Lawrence Lyons. Agenda highlights for TS WG#1 included: review of magnetic field and current configurations measured by the CRRES satellite; description of data sets of two recent event periods acquired through coordination with the International Solar Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) program; and discussion of future GEM/ISTP coordinated observations. The final session of the workshop, chaired by Delores Knipp of the United States Air Force Academy, focused on the "Space Weather Event of 3-5 November 1993." The goal of this initiative is to follow a significant solar-terrestrial event from its origin at the Sun and to trace the flow of particles and energy from the subsequent magnetic storm through the dissipative elements of the magnetosphere, ionosphere, and thermosphere. The agenda included a review of the vast amount of data collected and discussion of the data analysis and synthesis that is underway. This session involved not only the GEM community, but also scientists representing other NSF-sponsored programs in aeronomy (CEDAR - Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions) and solar-heliospheric physics (SHINE - Solar, Heliospheric, and INterplanetary Environment), who had met separately at the Moscone Center earlier in the day. A future joint GEM/CEDAR/SHINE meeting is planned as a part of next summer's workshop agendas. For an update on other GEM working group activities, I invite you to browse the GEM World Wide Web Home Page (managed by Chris Russell and Guan Le of UCLA) at "http://www.ucla.edu.spa.gem". At this site, you will find links to an extensive amount of detailed material on the GEM program including complete working group reports, steering committee reports, and current and back-issues of The GEM Messenger - the electronic GEM newsletter. You will also discover a novel GEM experiment called the GEM "Virtual" On-line Poster session, where GEM-relevant posters may be viewed electronically. Warm wishes for a healthy and happy holiday! Best regards, --- Harlan E. Spence +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Harlan E. Spence Asst. Professor of Astronomy Center for Space Physics and Department of Astronomy College of Liberal Arts and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Boston University 725 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, MA 02215 Ph: (617) 353-7412 Fax: (617) 353-6463 e-mail: spence at bu.edu WWW: http://bu-ast.bu.edu/people/spence.html =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |To add name to the mailing list, send a message to: editor at igpp.ucla.edu | |For message to whole GEM mailing list, send to: gem at igpp.ucla.edu | | | |URL of GEM Home Page: http://igpp.ucla.edu/gem/Welcome.html | |Please update your e-mail address. | |CAUTION: Do not send messages to gem at igpp.ucla.edu unless you want | | your message to go to everyone in the GEM mailing list! | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+