HR: 0800h
AN: SM11A-1179    [Abstracts]
TI: A Statistical Comparison of the Geotail and MHD Plasma Sheet
AU: * Guild, T
EM: tguild@bu.edu
AF: Boston University Center for Space Physics, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 United States
AU: Spence, H
EM: spence@bu.edu
AF: Boston University Center for Space Physics, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 United States
AU: Goodrich, C
EM: ccg@bu.edu
AF: Boston University Center for Space Physics, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 United States
AU: Lyon, J
EM: lyon@tinman.dartmouth.edu
AF: Boston University Center for Space Physics, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 United States
AU: Lyon, J
EM: lyon@tinman.dartmouth.edu
AF: Dartmouth College Department of Physics and Astronomy, 6127 Wilder Laboratory, Hanover, NH 03755 United States
AU: Kepko, L
EM: lkepko@bu.edu
AF: Boston University Center for Space Physics, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 United States
AB: We present a statistical comparison of the near-earth central plasma sheet properties derived from Geotail observations and MHD simulations. We bin Geotail observations from 1995 to mid-1998 in the XY$_{GSM}$ plane and compare them with binned parameters from a 2 month simulation of the Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry (LFM) model. The distributions of solar wind inputs driving the simulation are statistically similar to the solar wind inputs during the 3.5 years of Geotail observations. This study improves on an earlier Guild et al. result by comparing the Geotail results to a longer simulation, yeilding a better statistical solar wind comparison between the two studies. Similar results from the data and model analysis serve as the basis for a statistical validation of the LFM model in the plasma sheet, whereas differences illuminate model shortcomings.
DE: 2740 Magnetospheric configuration and dynamics
DE: 2744 Magnetotail
DE: 2753 Numerical modeling
DE: 2760 Plasma convection
DE: 2764 Plasma sheet
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting