BIRA-IASB’s plasmasphere model
The plasmasphere is a region of the Earth’s inner magnetosphere, filled with dense, low energy plasma of ionospheric origin, forming a toroidal region around the Earth. Its outer boundary is called the plasmapause.
The BIRA-IASB plasmasphere model is a 3D kinetic dynamic model of the plasmasphere coupled to the empirical International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) model as boundary condition. The plasmapause position is determined by using the mechanism of interchange instability.
The SafeSpace Project
SafeSpace was a scientific research project funded by Horizon 2020, the EU framework programme, that kicked off in January 2020 and lasted 3 years. The project aimed at advancing space weather radiation risk nowcasting and forecasting capabilities and, consequently, at contributing to the safety of space assets through the transition of powerful space weather prediction tools from research to operations.
To ensure an efficient and optimized transfer from science to application, a close collaboration between academia and research institutes (NKUA, ONERA, KU Leuven, IAP, UPS, BIRA-IASB), a major partner from the European space industry (TAS) and a space-oriented enterprise (SPARC) has been built.
This team improved radiation belt modelling through the incorporation of processes and parameters that are of major importance to radiation belt dynamics into an existing physical model (Salammbô). The plasmapause position obtained from the plasmasphere model serves as input for the wave-particle interaction models and the density data as input for the Salammbô data assimilation.
Main results
The ultimate result of the project is a sophisticated model of the electron radiation belt and a space weather service prototype with tailored radiation belt environment indicators, which provides space weather forecasts for three different typical orbits around the Earth, low (LEO), medium (MEO) and geostationary (GEO) orbit, with lead times of 4 days.
Want to know more?
- SafeSpace project: Radiation Belt Environmental Indicators for the Safety of Space Assets
- SafeSpace Work package on Inner Magnetosphere Dynamics
References
Dahmen, N., Sicard, A., Brunet, A., Santolik, O., Pierrard, V., Botek, E., and Darrouzet, F. (2022). FARWEST: Efficient computation of wave-particle interactions for a dynamic description of the electron radiation belt diffusion. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 127(10), e2022JA030518, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JA030518.
Pierrard, V., Botek, E., and Darrouzet, F. (2021). Improving Predictions of the 3D Dynamic Model of the Plasmasphere. Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, 8:681401, https://doi.org/10.3389/fspas.2021.681401.
