Table of Contents ====================================================================== 1. GEM Workshops in 2015 and 2016 2. HSO Coordination (Including Ground Based Observatories) Session at 2014 GEM Mini-workshop 3. Call for Participation in GEM-CEDAR Modeling Challenge Session at 2014 GEM Mini-workshop ====================================================================== *************************** ** THE GEM MESSENGER ** *************************** Volume 24, Number 39 November 25, 2014 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. GEM Workshops in 2015 and 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Xia Cai and Barbara Emery-Geiger The dates and locations for the annual GEM and CEDAR Summer Workshops have been set by two steering committees and workshop coordinators. GEM 2014 Summer Workshop will be hold from June 15-19, 2015 at Viceroy Snowmass Resort in Snowmass, Colorado. The GEM Student Workshop will be on Sunday June 14th. CEDAR 2014 Summer Workshop will be in the following week from June 21 to June 25 in Seattle, Washington. GEM 2015 Summer Workshop will be a joint meeting with CEDAR 2015 Summer Workshop. It is from June 19 to June 24th. The Sunday June 19 will be a joint Student Workshop. More information could be found here: http://cedarweb.hao.ucar.edu/wiki/index.php/Workshop:Main or http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/gemwiki/index.php/Future_Workshops ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. HSO Coordination (Including Ground Based Observatories) Session at 2014 GEM Mini-workshop ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Vassilis Angelopoulos and Thomas E. Moore This is an invitation for your participation in the upcoming mini-GEM session titled "HSO planning" at the 2014 AGU. Time and location: Sunday Dec.14, 2:20 - 4:10, Stanford Room, Westin SF Market Str., 50 Third Street, San Francisco. We would like you to help shape the Heliophysics System Observatory by coordinating space and ground assets for the next few years. With the upcoming launch of MMS (March 2015) the Heliophysics community has the unique opportunity to coordinate the THEMIS and MMS orbits to perform simultaneous measurements at/near apogee from opposite sides of the Earth and integrate other current and upcoming missions (ERG, Geotail, Cluster, GOES, ...) into a global observatory. This is at the heart of the Heliophysics Decadal Survey recommendation to implement a “Heliophysics System Observatory” (HSO). The scientific objectives that can be addressed are unparalleled, since kinetic measurements can (for the first time) be placed in the global context of drivers and effects in an organized and pre-planned fashion. Ground based assets are key to the success of the field. The THEMIS-MMS coordination plan aims to position the spacecraft at apogee at ~6:00UT when MMS is at the dayside and THEMIS is at pre-midnight (23 Local time) such that ground based assets in the American sector will be optimally observing the polar cap and the nightside oval (this occurs during fall/winter seasons in the next several years), while Svalbard, other imagers and radars at the cusp and polar cap will be also well positioned near noon. In the summers (when THEMIS is at the dayside magnetopause and MMS at the nightside) the optimal time is ~15:30UT as the South Pole and nearby Antarctic stations will be observing the cusp and while southern radars and other assets will be observing the nightside. One but not the only motivation for doing this is to understand the global connections of magnetic reconnection: the drivers, effects and coupling of dayside and nightside reconnection. This flow of energy has manifestations across the entire magnetosphere, including the inner magnetosphere, where Van Allen Probes is now, to be joined soon by the Japanese ERG mission. Cluster’s high latitude and Geotail equatorial measurements provide additional reference points on the global system responses. The questions to be discussed during this meeting can be summarized as: 1) What are the critical, unique science questions that can be addressed by an HSO coordination? 2) What are the operational modes for ground/space assets that will enable breakthrough science? 3) What type of coordination is needed to ensure those optimal modes can happen? If you would like more information regarding the current proposal for using THEMIS fuel resources (and low-impact orbit tweaks to MMS) to enable this coordination, please see: ftp://apollo.ssl.berkeley.edu/pub/vassilis/HSO THEMIS orbit elements exist athttp://sscweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/ (you can use 4D viewer, or tipsod to view orbits and ground projections). If you are interested in coordinating ground or space observations during this exciting period ahead, please join us with your ideas on how to extract the most science out of our field’s hardware. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Call for Participation in GEM-CEDAR Modeling Challenge Session at 2014 GEM Mini-workshop ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Masha Kuznetsova and Ja Soon Shim We invite modelers, data providers, science and operational users of space weather models to participate in the GEM-CEDAR Modeling Challenge Session, which will be held during 2014 GEM mini-Workshop on Sunday, December 14th, 2014, 02:20-06:10 pm, in the Cornell Room of the Westin San Francisco Market Street, 50 Third St. San Francisco. Topics for discussions and tentative agenda Modeling challenges in auroral region (2:20-4:10) • Introduction: Masha Kuznetsova (CCMC) (2:20-2:30) • Auroral Charging and environments information required to model charging: Joseph I. Minow (NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center) (2:30-2:50) • Intense Poynting flux observed at very high latitude during magnetic storms: Yanshi Huang (Univ. of New Mexico) (2:50-3:05) • New results on the energy transfer to the ionosphere- thermosphere: Cheryl Y Huang (USAF AFMC AFRL/RVBXP) (3:05-3:20) Discussion (3:20-4:10) • How to define boundaries in auroral region • How to model boundaries in auroral region and validate them Modeling challenges in TEC and neutral density (4:20-6:10) We will focus on the formulation of new validation study of model performance in predicting TEC. We will build upon our previous TEC validation study that was conducted for 8 discontinuous longitude swaths (5 degrees) for 2006 Dec event using GPS TEC measurements provided by MIT (Anthea Coster and Larisa Goncharenko) and JPL (Xiaoqing Pi) and IGS TEC provided by Sarah McDonald (NRL) to expand the study. For the new TEC validation study, we will consider larger continuous regions (e.g., North and South America, and Europe) with high data coverage. One of the key lessons learned from the previous TEC validation study, it is critical to understand uncertainty in TEC measurements for model validation. In the workshop, we will discuss how to prepare TEC measurements for better model validation study • Capabilities and experience of Northrop-Grumman and why we need accurate ionospheric models: James C. Jones (Northrop-Grumman) (4:20-4:35) • Uncertainty assessment of TEC measurements: Ludger Scherliess (USU) (4:35-4:50) • TEC data quality for data assimilation models and model validation: Geoff Crowley (ASTRA) (4:50-5:05) • TEC modeling (and Mahalanobis): Roy Calfas (Univ. of Texas) (5:05-5:20) Discussion (5:20-5:45) • TEC data preparation for validation study o vTEC vs sTEC o Bin size (lat x lon x time) for vTEC o Selection of TEC observation as a ground truth: difference in TEC due to different data processing (e.g., MIT TEC and JPL TEC) • New results in thermosphere modeling: Dan Weimer (Virginia Tech) (5:45-6:00) Discussion (6:00-6:10) • Neutral density at higher altitude (> 600 km) Please join the GEM-CEDAR Modeling Challenge Workshop and share your thoughts on the topics. +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | To broadcast announcements to the GEM community, please contact | | Peter Chi, GEM Communications Coordinator, at: | | | | | | Please submit your announcements in plain text or Word document. | | | | To subscribe the GEM Messenger, send an e-mail to | | | | with the following command in the body of your e-mail message: | | subscribe gem | | To remove yourself from the mailing list, the command is: | | unsubscribe gem | | | | GEM Messenger is also posted online via newsfeed at | | http://heliophysics.blogspot.com and | | http://www.facebook.com/heliophysics | | | | Back issues are available at: | | http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/gemwiki/messenger/ | | | | URL of GEM Home Page: http://aten.igpp.ucla.edu/gemwiki | | Workshop Information: http://www.cpe.vt.edu/gem/index.html | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+