HR: 0800h
AN: SM31A-0397    [Abstracts]
TI: Modeling the inner magnetospheric effects of substorms using the RCM-E
AU: * Toffoletto, F R
EM: toffo@rice.edu
AF: Rice University, Physics and Astronomy Department, MS 108, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX 77005-1892 United States
AU: Sazykin, S
EM: sazykin@rice.edu
AF: Rice University, Physics and Astronomy Department, MS 108, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX 77005-1892 United States
AU: Wolf, R A
EM: rawolf@rice.edu
AF: Rice University, Physics and Astronomy Department, MS 108, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX 77005-1892 United States
AU: Spiro, R
EM: spiro@rice.edu
AF: Rice University, Physics and Astronomy Department, MS 108, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX 77005-1892 United States
AU: Hill, T W
EM: hill@rice.edu
AF: Rice University, Physics and Astronomy Department, MS 108, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX 77005-1892 United States
AU: Hill, T W
EM: hill@rice.edu
AF: Prairie View A&M University, P. O. Box 188, Prairie View, TX 77446-0188 United States
AU: Erickson, G M
EM: gmerickson@pvamu.edu
AF: Prairie View A&M University, P. O. Box 188, Prairie View, TX 77446-0188 United States
AU: Lemon, C L
EM: Colby.Lemon@aero.org
AF: The Aerospace Corporation, Space Sciences Department P.O. Box 92957, M2-260, Los Angeles, CA 90009-2957 United States
AB: We present work in progress on the application of a first-principles computational model of the substorm that solves a set of equations describing the tail and inner plasma sheet and their coupling to the inner magnetosphere and ionosphere. The major elements of the model, known as the RCM-E, are the Rice Convection Model (RCM) combined with an Equilibrium solver that computes the magnetic field that is in force-balance with the RCM-computed plasma distribution. The substorm growth phase represents the direct response of the magnetosphere/ionosphere system to the magnetized solar wind. When a uniform dawn-dusk electric field is applied on the outer boundary across the tail magnetosphere magnetospheric plasma convects Earthward, the magnetic field in the inner plasma sheet becomes more and more stretched, the current-sheet thins, and magnetic-field minimum forms, producing a highly-stretched and stressed configuration. From the viewpoint of the inner magnetosphere, the main effect of the substorm expansion phase is the creation of new closed plasma-sheet flux tubes that have lower values of pV^γ than ordinary plasma-sheet flux tubes and can thus be injected into the geosynchronous-orbit region and the inner magnetosphere. We describe results from numerical experiments where, by modifying the boundary conditions of the model, we initiate a substorm tail collapse on the system after a growth phase. Consistency checks using in situ Geotail data are used to ensure that the model inputs and results are within a realistic range. This modeling approach uses carefully applied plasma and electric boundary conditions studied more directly to test different their effects on the global system.
DE: 2712 Electric fields (2411)
DE: 2730 Magnetosphere: inner
DE: 2760 Plasma convection (2463)
DE: 2790 Substorms
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005