Extreme Space Weather: Magnetosphere Response and Ionosphere Drivers

Wednesday, 13 February 2019
Fountain III/IV (Westin Pasadena)
Joachim Raeder1, William D Cramer2, Kai Germaschewski2, Dimitry Pokhotelov3, Banafsheh Ferdousi4, Naomi Maruyama5 and Timothy J Fuller-Rowell6, (1)University of New Hampshire Main Campus, Durham, NH, United States, (2)University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States, (3)Leibniz-Institute for Atmospheric Physics, Kuehlungsborn, Germany, (4)University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (5)University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States, (6)Univ of Colorado-CIRES, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
Extreme space weather events are also extremely rare, but pose a significant threat to our infrastructure. The one known event of such kind was the Carrington storm of 1859, but it was not well documented; in particular the solar wind and IMF conditions that caused it remain guesses. However, the STEREO-A observations of July 23, 2012 showed solar wind and IMF parameters that are most likely comparable to those of the Carrington event, and remind us that such extreme events are very well possible now. Here, we use OpenGGCM simulations of such events to assess the effects of such solar wind and IMF on the magnetosphere. Previous work has shown that during the much more benign Halloween storm the nose of the magnetopause was as close as 4.9 RE, with an accordingly large polar cap. We will present simulations of a sequence of made-up storms with increasingly larger driving and demonstrate the further expansion of the polar cap, and the eventual saturation. In addition, we will show how the ionosphere potential penetrates to lower latitudes and affects the ionosphere and thermosphere at mid latitudes when the solar wind drivers become extreme.
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