Recirculation of plasmasphere material during idealized magnetic storms

Abstract

The fate of flux tube material once it is eroded from of the plasmasphere through a dayside plume remains unknown. The eroded plasmasphere material can be either swept away by the solar wind and lost from Earth’s system, or recirculated into the inner magnetosphere. Recirculating plasmasphere material could plausibly enter the central plasma sheet and contribute to the ring current. This work uses numerical models to explore this possibility. Historically this has been a difficult question to answer due to the fact that solar wind, ionosphere, and plasmaspheric plasmas are all dominated by hydrogen making it difficult to distinguish the source of plasma from observation alone. Recent advances in computing have enabled us to answer this question. Using the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) to couple the Block-Adaptive-Tree-Solar-Roe-Up-Wind-Scheme (BATS-R-US), Dynamic Global Core Plasma Model (DGCPM), and the Ridley Ionosphere Model (RIM), we can track the motion of the plasmaspheric material once it leaves the plasmasphere in a self-consistent manner.