| Presenter Name: | Geoff Reeves |
| Authors: | Geoff Reeves, Yue Chen, Vania Jordanova, Sorin Zaharia, Mike Henderson, and Dan Welling |
| Title: | DREAM at LEO: Low-altitude mapping of equatorial ring current and radiation belt model results |
| Abstract: | Space weather models of the inner magnetosphere have taken two different computational approaches. One approach is to map all populations down the field lines and solve all the equations of motion on a spherical surface that approximates the ionosphere. This approach is particularly easy to implement if a dipole magnetic field approximation is used because field line tracing is trivial. Simulations using the highly-distorted storm-time magnetic field configurations have benefited from using a different approach – solving the equations of motion on a planar (or more distorted) surface defined by the magnetic equator. DREAM (the Dynamic Radiation Environment Assimilation Model) and its ring current/magnetic field module RAM-SCB (the Ring current-Atmosphere interaction Model – Self Consistent B) perform the calculations in the equatorial “plane” in order to facilitate calculation of anisotropic particle distributions, drift shell splitting, wave-particle interactions, and other effects in a realistic magnetic field. Recent work has emphasized the application DREAM and RAM-SCB to low-altitude orbit (LEO) through improved calculation of the field-aligned currents and precipitating energetic particle distributions. |