Geospace System

Geospace System is a potential new focus group for the GEM community. In this space we can developed the focus group proposal which will be considered by the Steering Community as part of its process in selecting new focus groups.

As a starting point here is the initial announcement from the GEM messenger describing the discussion session held at the 2009 GEM Meeting.

Prospectus for a GEM Focus Group on the "Geospace System"

Session Organizers Bill Lotko and George Siscoe

We would like to initiate a discussion among the magnetospheric and aeronomy communities (portions, at least) on the prospect of undertaking a global, system-dynamics study of the coupled solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere system, which we identify simply as the geospace system. The suggestion responds to two circumstances: first, 50 years of magnetospheric research have shown the geospace system to be interactively coupled in multiple ways from the solar wind to the thermosphere, and second, as GEM moves in its long-range program from the 'divide-and-conquer' stage to the more challenging synthesis stage, a focus group devoted to problems of the coupled system will leverage scientific progress in each GEM research area. The magnitude of the task to comprehend the global system in its coupled complexity is almost certainly too great for a single, scientist-centered research team and probably too great for the multiple teams of a single institution. Instead it would seem to require a sustained collaborative effort by experts of manifold specialties distributed among many institutions. It might even take the combined collaboration of the GEM community and a sizable portion of the CEDAR community.

The priorities of such a focus group clearly must be enlightened by community interest. To begin the conversation we can suggest among many possible directions several problems, each global in scope and of considerable current interest . We have asked some GEM participants to help initiate the discussion with a few slides on each problem. They include: 1) the dayside reconnection potential, its relationship to the polar cap potential, and the saturation of both at large IMF; 2) global resonance, periodicity of the magnetospheric response, and sawtooth phenomena; 3) ionospheric-magnetospheric plasma circulation, including ionospheric outflows, and its effects on plasmasheet and inner magnetospheric dynamics; and 4) prompt penetration electric fields and their relationship to the dayside ionospheric superfountain, storm enhanced density, and plasmaspheric plumes. While some aspects of these global problems can be treated as regional phenomena, differentiated by distinct physical processes, their dynamics seem to evolve as an integrated whole during extreme solar wind conditions. The geospace system thus behaves coherently across a broad spatiotemporal range, making it difficult to unravel its causal behavior by considering the response in terms of isolated elements or processes. Integration of global problems of this type into a system-dynamics picture spans the expertise of all five GEM research areas and several CEDAR working groups. We invite participation from the GEM community in deciding whether the time is right for this focus group, and, if so, how best to structure its direction.

Summary of the Snowmass 2009 Breakout

Distinguishing Science of Geospace System Investigations

• Behavior manifested by coupled system

• various elements of system act in concert

Key Questions

• How do elements interact? • What are the right system questions?

Focus Group Objectives

• Guide Model Applications and Development

 – Use models to explore geospace system problems
 – What new physics is needed in models to improve fidelity in describing system behavior

• Advance Empirical Understanding

 – Identify and coordinate observations applicable to system behavior
 – Formulate empirical tests and validations

Criteria for Focus Group Projects

• Involve system problems, relational issues between system elements • Addressable with existing tools and methods • Sufficient interest, critical mass effort • Entail model applications and observations • Problems can be formulated as “Challenges”

Desirable: Opportunistic in utilizing timely “assets,” both modeling and observational capabilities

Next Steps

• Develop FG proposal (11/1) • Establish open Wiki (8/1) • GEM Messenger announcement (8/1) • Advocates for FG projects to address criteria on Wiki

 – Reconnection/transpolar saturation
 – Global resonance and sawtooth oscillation
 – ...

• Identify 2-4 most compelling projects (to be named in proposal) • Select 2 at 2009 GEM Mini Workshop (if GS proposal is accepted) • Pursue 2 projects beginning at 2010 GEM Workshop