Is this project an undergraduate, graduate, or faculty project?
Undergraduate
individual
What campus are you from?
Daytona Beach
Authors' Class Standing
Grace Gratton, Senior
Lead Presenter's Name
Grace Gratton
Faculty Mentor Name
Dr. Samantha Wallace
Abstract
It is now well-established that the ambient solar wind is dynamic and highly structured at mesoscales – scales larger than kinetic, but smaller than CMEs/SIRs. These structures are often created at the Sun and survive to 1 AU, where they form the ground-state of space weather as they continually buffet Earth's magnetosphere, the moon, and Mars. Two primary ways that mesoscale structures pose significant risks to spacecraft and astronauts are through driving radiation belt depletion, and amplifying the hazards of CMEs and SIRs through upstream solar wind preconditioning. Characterizing the solar origins and solar wind properties of geoeffective mesoscale structures is essential for eventually forecasting their arrival and space weather impact at various satellites. However, the use of a model is required to bridge in situ solar wind, magnetosphere, and/or Earth upper-atmospheric measurements with their source at the Sun. In this interdisciplinary work, we leverage modeling and data analysis to characterize a series of events observed by the Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses (BARREL) instrument – in which Bremsstrahlung X-rays observed in Earth’s upper atmosphere (generated by relativistic electron precipitation from the radiation belts) exhibit periodicities that match those detected upstream in solar wind density fluctuations. We use the Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) model to derive the sources of these events at the Sun. We characterize 118 events from 2013–2020 based on their solar sources (i.e. active region, quiet Sun, or coronal hole), heliospheric context (spacecraft separation from the HCS and S-web), and in-situ solar wind properties observed at ACE, including composition, a conserved property set in the corona. We find that more than 80\% of these events originate from the solar magnetic open-closed boundary, a highly dynamic region where interchange reconnection is driving the release of the solar wind. Nearly 90\% of the events were driven by slow solar wind with plasma that is FIP enhanced, indicative of closed-field coronal origin. We discuss these findings and others, in the context of radiation belt particle precipitation drivers and developing a space weather forecasting framework for the ambient solar wind.
Did this research project receive funding support from the Office of Undergraduate Research.
Yes, Spark Grant
Included in
Characterizing the Solar Sources of Periodic Mesoscale Solar Wind Structures Responsible for Radiation Belt Particle Loss: Results and Implications for Space Weather Forecasting
It is now well-established that the ambient solar wind is dynamic and highly structured at mesoscales – scales larger than kinetic, but smaller than CMEs/SIRs. These structures are often created at the Sun and survive to 1 AU, where they form the ground-state of space weather as they continually buffet Earth's magnetosphere, the moon, and Mars. Two primary ways that mesoscale structures pose significant risks to spacecraft and astronauts are through driving radiation belt depletion, and amplifying the hazards of CMEs and SIRs through upstream solar wind preconditioning. Characterizing the solar origins and solar wind properties of geoeffective mesoscale structures is essential for eventually forecasting their arrival and space weather impact at various satellites. However, the use of a model is required to bridge in situ solar wind, magnetosphere, and/or Earth upper-atmospheric measurements with their source at the Sun. In this interdisciplinary work, we leverage modeling and data analysis to characterize a series of events observed by the Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses (BARREL) instrument – in which Bremsstrahlung X-rays observed in Earth’s upper atmosphere (generated by relativistic electron precipitation from the radiation belts) exhibit periodicities that match those detected upstream in solar wind density fluctuations. We use the Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) model to derive the sources of these events at the Sun. We characterize 118 events from 2013–2020 based on their solar sources (i.e. active region, quiet Sun, or coronal hole), heliospheric context (spacecraft separation from the HCS and S-web), and in-situ solar wind properties observed at ACE, including composition, a conserved property set in the corona. We find that more than 80\% of these events originate from the solar magnetic open-closed boundary, a highly dynamic region where interchange reconnection is driving the release of the solar wind. Nearly 90\% of the events were driven by slow solar wind with plasma that is FIP enhanced, indicative of closed-field coronal origin. We discuss these findings and others, in the context of radiation belt particle precipitation drivers and developing a space weather forecasting framework for the ambient solar wind.