SM13A-2464
Temporal Cusp Ion Signatures and Magnetopause Reconnection during Northward IMF
Monday, 14 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Hyunju KIM Connor, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, David G Sibeck, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, Joachim Raeder, University of New Hampshire Main Campus, Durham, NH, United States and Karlheinz J Trattner, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
Dispersed ion signatures observed in the magnetospheric cusps have been used to understand the locations and properties of magnetopause reconnection. Whether a cusp structure is spatial or temporal is an important question because these structures reveal the spatial and temporal nature of magnetopause reconnection. We study temporal cusp ion signatures and their relation to the magnetopause processes during northward IMF using the Open Global Geospace Circulation Model (OpenGGCM) and the Liouville Theorem Particle Tracer (LTPT). OpenGGCM produces dayside reconnection within the framework of resistive MHD, while the LTPT calculates cusp ion signatures caused by the simulated reconnection. Our model produces temporal cusp ion dispersions with ion energies that increase with decreasing latitude during northward IMF, although these signatures are commonly associated with subsolar reconnection during southward IMF. We investigate which magnetopause process is responsible for the temporal cusp signatures.
