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The Impact of the 8–10 March 2012 Geomagnetic Storm on Inner Zone Protons as Measured by Van Allen Probes

Journal Article · · Journal of Geophysical Research. Space Physics
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/2024ja032800· OSTI ID:2476032
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [1];  [5]
  1. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (United States)
  2. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  3. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (United States); National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO (United States)
  4. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States). Center for Cooperative Research in the Environmental Sciences; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Boulder, CO (United States)
  5. Air Force Research Lab. (AFRL), Kirtland Air Force Base, NM (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

The Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT) instrument on the Van Allen Probes observed a double-peaked inner zone proton population throughout the 7 year lifetime of the mission. M. Hudson et al. (2023) showed that a strong SEP event accompanied by a CME-shock in early March 2012 provided the Solar Energetic Proton (SEP) source for the higher L trapped proton population, which then diffused radially inward to be observed by REPT at L = 2. The study followed trajectories of SEP protons launched isotropically from a sphere at 7 Re for 2.5 hr in fields calculated by the LFM-RCM global MHD model, which includes electric fields needed to model the transport and trapping of the protons by the shock, and then a radial diffusion simulation was run for 2 years using the result from the test-particle simulation as the initial condition. The simulation result was compared with REPT measurement in November 2013 and showed reasonable agreement. However, the simulation overestimated the Phase Space Density by a factor of four due to lack of field line curvature scattering during the storm in the model. In this study, a test-particle simulation is performed for 2 days following the injection and trapping of protons in March 2012 using TS05 fields to simulate the field line curvature scattering of the trapped SEP due to the buildup of the ring current during the geomagnetic storm. The resulting sample distribution was then weighted using the flux at the end of the two-hour MHD-test particle simulation. A radial diffusion simulation is then run using the initial profile that included the loss effect, with improved comparison with REPT measurements after 2 years.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
89233218CNA000001
OSTI ID:
2476032
Report Number(s):
LA-UR--22-31289
Journal Information:
Journal of Geophysical Research. Space Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Geophysical Research. Space Physics Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 129; ISSN 2169-9380
Publisher:
American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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