Modeling of the coupled magnetospheric and neutral wind dynamos. Annual Technical status report No. 1, 1 April 1993-30 March 1994

Technical Report · Tue Mar 01 00:00:00 EST 1994

OSTI ID:7033384

Thayer, J P

This report summarizes the progress made in the first year of NASA Grant No. NAGW-3508 entitled Modeling of the Coupled Magnetospheric and Neutral Wind Dynamos.' The approach taken has been to impose magnetospheric boundary conditions with either pure voltage or current characteristics and solve the neutral wind dynamo equation under these conditions. The imposed boundary conditions determine whether the neutral wind dynamo will contribute to the high-latitude current system or the electric potential. The semi-annual technical report, dated December 15, 1993, provides further detail describing the scientific and numerical approach of the project. The numerical development has progressed and the dynamo solution for the case when the magnetosphere acts as a voltage source has been evaluated completely using spectral techniques. The simulation provides the field-aligned current distribution at high latitudes due to the neutral wind dynamo. A number of geophysical conditions can be simulated to evaluate the importance of the neutral wind dynamo contribution to the field-aligned current system. On average, field-aligned currents generated by the neutral wind dynamo contributed as much as 30 percent to the large-scale field-aligned current system driven by the magnetosphere. A term analysis of the high-latitude neutral wind dynamo equation describing the field aligned current distribution has also been developed to illustrate the important contributing factors involved in the process. The case describing the neutral dynamo response for a magnetosphere acting as a pure current generator requires the existing spectral code to be extended to a pseudo-spectral method and is currently under development.

• Research Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA (United States)
• OSTI ID: 7033384
• Report Number(s): N-94-27852; NASA-CR-195273; NAS-1.26:195273; CNN: NAGW-3508; SRI PROJ. 4604
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
EARTH MAGNETOSPHERE
COUPLING
ELECTRIC CURRENTS
WIND
BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
IONOSPHERE
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
PROGRESS REPORT
CURRENTS
DOCUMENT TYPES
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
PLANETARY IONOSPHERES
661320* - Auroral
Ionospheric
& Magnetospheric Phenomena- (1992-)