92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Tuesday, 24 January 2012: 9:30 AM
Sun to Earth Numerical Modeling of High Speed Stream Intervals
Room 252/253 (New Orleans Convention Center )
Michael Wiltberger, NCAR, Boulder, CO; and S. C. Solomon, W. Wang, L. Qain, A. Burns, R. E. Lopez, R. Bruntz, and S. R. Elkington

While Coronal Mass Ejections are typically seen as the major drivers of space weather impacts in geospace the most recent solar minimum has reminded us that high-speed stream intervals can have significant impacts. Among these impacts are enhancements in the electron radiation belt intensities that can affect spacecraft, strong gradients and buildups in the total electron content (TEC) that can affect GPS based systems, and lastly buildups in the neutral density in thermosphere that can have dramatic impacts on satellite drag. Using the Sun-to-Earth numerical modeling chain developed by the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM) we have simulated two month long intervals containing multiple high speed streams. These simulations provide us with an excellent baseline to assess the performance of physics-based numerical modeling with long lead times. We will compare the results of these simulations with measurements of the ULF wave intensity at geosynchronous orbit which is known to be a strongly correlated with enhancements of radiation belt intensities. We will also present initial results of driving energetic particle simulations with these fields to provide a more direct comparison of radiation belt enhancements. In order to quantify model performance on TEC we will compare the model results with reconstructions of the TEC obtain from the COSMIC satellite constellations. Finally, we examine the temporal and spatial variations of the neutral density and examine its impacts on on reference orbital objects.

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