Nowcast Model for Low Energy Electrons (10-200 keV) in the Inner Magnetosphere

Abstract:

We present the nowcast model for low energy (< 200 keV) electrons in the inner magnetosphere, operating online under the SPACECAST project (http://fp7-spacecast.eu) which is the version of the Inner Magnetosphere Particle Transport and Acceleration model (IMPTAM) for electrons. Low energy electron fluxes are very important to specify when hazardous satellite surface charging phenomena are considered. The presented model provides the low energy electron flux at all L-shells and at all satellite orbits, when necessary. The model is driven by the real time solar wind and Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) parameters with 1 hour time shift for propagation to the Earth’s magnetopause, and by the real time Dst index. Real time geostationary GOES 13 or GOES 15 (whenever which available) data on electron fluxes in three energies, such as 40 keV, 75 keV, 150 keV, are used for comparison and validation of IMPTAM running online. On average, the model provides very good agreement with the data, the basic level of the observed fluxes is very well reproduced. The best agreement between the modeled and the observed fluxes are found for <100 keV electrons. At the same time, not all the peaks and dropouts in the observed electron fluxes are reproduced. For 150 keV electrons, the modeled fluxes are often smaller than the observed ones by an order of magnitude. We estimate the The Normalized Root-Mean-Square Deviation (NRMSD), compute the binary event tables for 1 hour window to reveal the model hit rates and Heidke Skill Scores. This is the first attempt to model low energy electrons in real time at 10 minutes resolution. The output of this model can serve as an input of electron seed population for the higher-energy radiation belt modeling.