Validation of the Space Weather Modeling Framework using observations from CHAMP and DMSP

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The Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) is a flexible framework for space weather simulation, which can couple magnetosphere and ionosphere processes. This work compares ionospheric outputs from SWMF with magnetic and plasma observations from CHAMP and DMSP satellites under both quiet and storm conditions, emphasizing the dependence of the model's performance for various magnetic local times, solar wind conditions, and seasons. The model predicts the potential better in the dawn‐dusk sector then in the noon‐midnight sector. For field‐aligned currents (FACs) the model performs better on the dayside than on the nightside. In addition, there is a trend toward unsatisfactory behavior in the model as solar activity increases. The model more accurately corresponds to observations during quiet times than disturbed periods. During storms the model FACs tend to locate at ∼4° MLat more poleward than the observations. Our analysis has revealed that the model performance depends strongly on the seasons. The model underestimates the cross polar cap potential (CPCP) by about ∼50% in the summer hemisphere while overestimating it by ∼50% in the winter hemisphere. The model calculates the difference between the winter and summer hemisphere CPCP on the order of a factor of 2.5, while DMSP data show that the actual factor is around 1.3. These results reveal that the ionospheric modeling subsets lack appropriate seasonal dependence.