5 research outputs found
Space weather opportunities from the Swarm mission including near real time applications
Sophisticated space weather monitoring aims at nowcasting and predicting solar-terrestrial interactions because
their effects on the ionosphere and upper atmosphere may seriously impact advanced technology. Operating
alert infrastructures rely heavily on ground-based measurements and satellite observations of the solar
and interplanetary conditions. New opportunities lie in the implementation of in-situ observations of the ionosphere
and upper atmosphere onboard low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellites. The multi-satellite mission Swarm is
equipped with several instruments which will observe electromagnetic and atmospheric parameters of the near
Earth space environment. Taking advantage of the multi-disciplinary measurements and the mission constellation
different Swarm products have been defined or demonstrate great potential for further development of novel
space weather products. Examples are satellite based magnetic indices monitoring effects of the magnetospheric
ring current or the polar electrojet, polar maps of ionospheric conductance and plasma convection, indicators of
energy deposition like Poynting flux, or the prediction of post sunset equatorial plasma irregularities. Providing
these products in timely manner will add significant value in monitoring present space weather and helping to
predict the evolution of several magnetic and ionospheric events. Swarm will be a demonstrator mission for the
valuable application of LEO satellite observations for space weather monitoring tools
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Large-scale fields and flows in the magnetosphere-ionosphere system
Advances in our understanding of the large-scale electric and magnetic fields in the coupled magnetosphere-ionosphere system are reviewed. The literature appearing in the period January 1991–June 1993 is sorted into 8 general areas of study. The phenomenon of substorms receives the most attention in this literature, with the location of onset being the single most discussed issue. However, if the magnetic topology in substorm phases was widely debated, less attention was paid to the relationship of convection to the substorm cycle. A significantly new consensus view of substorm expansion and recovery phases emerged, which was termed the ‘Kiruna Conjecture’ after the conference at which it gained widespread acceptance. The second largest area of interest was dayside transient events, both near the magnetopause and the ionosphere. It became apparent that these phenomena include at least two classes of events, probably due to transient reconnection bursts and sudden solar wind dynamic pressure changes. The contribution of both types of event to convection is controversial. The realisation that induction effects decouple electric fields in the magnetosphere and ionosphere, on time scales shorter than several substorm cycles, calls for broadening of the range of measurement techniques in both the ionosphere and at the magnetopause. Several new techniques were introduced including ionospheric observations which yield reconnection rate as a function of time. The magnetospheric and ionospheric behaviour due to various quasi-steady interplanetary conditions was studied using magnetic cloud events. For northward IMF conditions, reverse convection in the polar cap was found to be predominantly a summer hemisphere phenomenon and even for extremely rare prolonged southward IMF conditions, the magnetosphere was observed to oscillate through various substorm cycles rather than forming a steady-state convection bay