2014 Summer Workshop

June 15-20, 2014

Renaissance Portsmouth Hotel & Conference Center, Portsmouth, Virginia

Web links to more Workshop information:

• GEM Workshop Website
• Workshop Schedule
• Poster Information
• Travel and Accommodations

Below are session announcements and scheduled presentations (if available) for active GEM Focus Groups. Updates on scheduled presentations may be posted at individual Focus Group pages (see links from Focus Group pages). The symbol @ in all e-mail addresses below is replaced by " [at] ".

(Last update of this page: 5/26/2014)

Geospace Systems Science Focus Group

Conveners: Joe Borovsky (jborovsky[at]spacescience.org), Bill Lotko (William.Lotko[at]dartmouth.edu), Vadim Uritsky (vadim.uritsky[at]nasa.gov), Juan Alejandro Valdivia (alejo[at]macul.ciencias.uchile.cl)

For the new "Geospace Systems Science" Focus group, two working sessions will be held at the GEM Summer Workshop in Portsmouth, VA. This is a call for research and participation in those two sessions.

Session 1: "Timescales, Time Lags, and Feedback Loops in the M-I System". The first purpose of this session is to identify, catalog, and quantify the known timescales and time lags in the M-I system associated with reactions to the solar wind, with plasma transport, with morphological evolution, with the evolution of plasma populations and radiation belts, with ionospheric outflows, etc. The second purpose is to identify and catalog the feedback loops in the driven M- I system. Put on your thinking caps and join this discussion.

Session 2: "Long-Running Measurements of the State of the System: What Can Be Done?" We rely chiefly on the geomagnetic indices to characterize the reaction of the magnetosphere to solar-wind driving. Are there other measures of the system that can and should be used? Can we create long-running, continuous "indices" that characterize the state of the electron radiation belt, the rate of ion outflow from the ionosphere, the stretching of the magnetotail, the polar-cap size, plasma-wave intensities, the global TEC, NOX densities, etc. We are asking participants to suggest and defend ideas for important measurements of the system and to say how feasible it would be to make an index of that measurement. Discussion without slides is optimal. Please contact the conveners about ideas.

A third GSS planning session will also be held, plus two joint sessions to be announced separately.

Quantitative Assessment of Radiation Belt Modeling Focus Group

Conveners: Jay Albert, Wen Li, Steve Morley, Weichao Tu

At this year's GEM Summer Workshop we will start a new Focus Group on "Quantitative Assessment of Radiation Belt Modeling". The goals of our FG are to bring together the current state-of-art models for the acceleration, transport, and loss processes in radiation belts, develop event-specific and global wave, plasma, and magnetic field models to drive these radiation belt models, and combine all these components to achieve a quantitative assessment of radiation belt modeling by validating against contemporary radiation belt measurements.

Five sessions have been planned for the upcoming GEM workshop:

Session 1 (Tue, 10:30-12:15 PM): "Joint Session with Radiation Belts & Wave Modeling focus group". In this joint session, the RBWM FG (finishing this year) will wrap up their accomplishments in the past 5 years and then set up the stage for our introduction of the new FG of Quantitative Assessment of Radiation Belt Modeling. We will discuss the remaining open questions in RB modeling and connect them to our FG goals and challenges.

Session 2 (Tue, 01:30-03:00 PM): "Review existing RB models and discuss where we are and what are needed". In this session, we solicit short presentations discussing the existing models for the acceleration, transport, and loss of radiation belt particles. In general, we welcome talks that not only showcase their results, but also include discussions like: "Mechanism ____ is evidently necessary, though not sufficient since ___." We will discuss questions such as: what are "standard" RB codes not doing well enough? vs. What are we not doing at all but probably should be?

Session 3 (Tue, 03:30-05:00 PM): "Various magnetospheric wave characteristics and their global distribution required in RB modeling". In this session, we solicit short presentations focusing on characterizing various wave properties that are required as inputs to RB models. The topics will cover ULF waves, chorus and hiss, EMIC waves, magnetosonic waves, etc., and their effects on RB particles. We will review the available wave models and discuss what are still missing for RB modeling.

Session 4 (Wed, 10:30-12:15 PM): "Seed populations, plasma density, and magnetic field configuration required in RB modeling". In this session, we solicit short presentations specifying other required inputs for driving RB simulations, which include particle seed populations, plasma density, magnetic field configuration, last closed drift shell, etc. Again, we will review what are currently available and discuss what are still missing.

Session 5 (Wed, 01:30-03:00 PM): "Wrap-up discussion and plan for future FG activities". In this final session, we will wrap up this year’s FG with more big-picture discussions, and plan for future FG activities for mini-GEM and next year. One important future activity is the 'RB dropout' and 'RB buildup' Challenges. Here we solicit short presentations proposing interesting dropout/buildup events for our future challenges.

If you would like to present in any of these sessions, please send your talk title and the relevant session number to Weichao Tu (wtu[at]lanl.gov) by June 6, 2014. We will review the talks and announce the detailed session agenda before the meeting. Participation in discussions and brief walk-in talks are always welcomed.

Thank you in advance for your contributions!