Global Environment Modeling December 2016 Volume 26, Issue 2 the Gemstone Notes from GEM Chair Inside This Issue Notes from GEM Chair

Global Environment Modeling December 2016 Volume 26, Issue 2 The GEMstone Notes from GEM Chair Inside this issue Notes from GEM Chair ........................ 1 Solar Wind-Magnetosphere Interaction Michael Wiltberger RA Report ........................................... 3 Transient Phenomena FG ................. 3 It’s been over a year since I took over the reigns Dayside Kinetic Processes FG ............ 5 as chair of the GEM program and I’m pleased to Magnetotail and Plasma Sheet RA Report ............................................................ 8 report that because of the active involvement of TIMI FG ............................................. 8 you in the GEM community the program re- Testing Proposed Links FG ............... 8 mains strong and ready to tackle the upcoming Lunar Distances FG .......................... 10 challenges. Inner Magnetsophere RA Report ........ 12 IMCEPI FG ........................................ 12 This last summer we had a very success- ful joint meeting with the CEDAR community in QARBM FG ....................................... 13 Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling RA Santa Fe. Let me start, by thank the members of Report ................................................ 15 the joint planning committee that worked tire- SIMIC FG .......................................... 15 lessly to ensure that this meeting was not a sep- M3-I2 FG .......................................... 16 arate GEM and CEDAR meetings in the same Global System Modeling RA Report .... 21 Magnetic Reconnection FG .............. 21 city, but a true joint meeting. The morning tuto- Geospace Systems Science FG ......... 25 rial sessions provided excellent insights into the UMEA FG ......................................... 27 geospace system we approach from different directions. While there where Modeling Methods & Validation FG . 30 many parallel breakout sessions we did have numerous joint breakout ses- Workshop Coordinator Report ........... 32 sions between the two communities. The strength of our meetings remains Student Representative Report .......... 34 GEM Steering Committee .................... 35 the sessions operated in workshop mode that allow a discussion not possible List of GEM Focus Groups .................... 36 at the larger scientific meetings we commonly attend. This past year saw the release of two major documents important to the space physics research community. First, was the release of the National Space Weather Action Plan (SWAP) by the National Science and Technology Council. This plan highlights and the related bill in the US Senate the atten- tion space weather is receiving at the highest levels of government. For the NSF and GEM community it calls for prioritization of efforts to support basic research related to space weather and the development and testing of cou- pled models of geospace. Clearly our efforts in GEM directly address this need and we can play an important role meeting the SWAP’s goals. The sec- ond document released was the Geospace Portfolio Review. The GEM program was reviewed quite favorably within this assessment with a recom- mendation that NSF should continue to support our community-defined research challenges. It also calls for the creation of an Integrative Geospace Science program that can foster even stronger collaboration between the traditional aeronomy, magnetosphere, and solar programs within the geo- 1 space section. The portfolio review is still undergo- ing evaluation by a National Academy committee and once that is in place the GEM steering committee will work closely with our NSF officials to We thank Janet Kozyra for ensure a robust future for GEM and our research priorities. her wonderful service during The 2017 GEM Meeting will be held in Portsmouth, VA from June 18-23 and will once her tenure as the GEM again be our traditional standalone meeting. The Program Manager. steering committee will be working closely with FG leaders to ensure that all of our sessions fully em- brace the workshop mentality essential to GEM. I look forward to seeing you at the GEM mini meeting before this year’s Fall AGU meeting. Once again this year’s meeting is being held at Holiday Inn Golden Gateway on Sunday December 11th. My thanks to all of you that make GEM a great program and I look forward to working with you in my final year as chair. If you ever have ques- tions or concerns about GEM and it’s future please feel free to contact me directly. My email address is [email protected] and my phone number is 303- 497-1532. 2017 GEM Summer Workshop Portsmouth, Virginia J u n e 1 8 - 2 3 , 2 0 1 7 The GEMstone Newsletter is edited by Peter Chi ([email protected]) and Marjorie Sowmendran ([email protected]). The distribution of GEMstone is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant AGS-1405565. 2 Solar Wind-Magnetosphere Interaction Research Area Report Coordinators: Katariina Nykyri and Steve Petrinec Transient Phenomena at beams form, a scenario supported by Geotail ob- the Magnetopause and Bow servations. Heli Hietala presented ARTEMIS observations of ULF wave growth in the foreshock at lu- Shock and Their Ground nar distances. The growth rate obtained from the two spacecraft measurements, as well as the other Signatures Focus Group properties of the waves, match well the results of a Co-Chairs: Hui Zhang, Q.-G. Zong, Mi- dispersion solver that uses the observed ion beam chael Ruohoniemi, and David Murr distribution as an input. Andrey Samsonov presented a method for incorporating kinetic foreshock effects into a global MHD model. They simulated The "Transient Phenomena at the Magnetopause four events with very distant subsolar magneto- and Bow Shock and Their Ground Signatures" focus pause crossings that occurred during nearly radial group held three sessions with 25 presentations IMF intervals lasting from one to several hours. covering the following research areas: 1. Kinetic They changed the solar wind boundary conditions and transient processes in the foreshock, bow for a global model assuming that the density and shock, and magnetosheath 2. Dayside magneto- velocity in the foreshock cavity decrease to ~60% pause processes and transport 3. Magnetospheric and ~94% of the respective ambient solar wind val- ues during intervals with small IMF cone angles. signatures of dayside transients. Christina Chu presented a hot flow anomaly (HFA) analog simulated in BATS-R-US and observations of 1. Kinetic and transient processes in the fore- how it affected the magnetosphere. This work will shock, bow shock, and magnetosheath joint be used to analyze ground signatures observed session with the “Dayside Kinetic Processes in Glob- with HFAs. Hui Zhang presented a statistical study al Solar Wind-Magnetosphere Interaction” Focus to determine what kinds of discontinuities are Group more efficient to generate HFAs. Their results show Kinetic effects throughout the dayside mag- that magnetic field on at least one side of the inter- netosphere are driven to a large extent by an array planetary discontinuities has to be connected to of local and external transient phenomena. The the bow shock in order to form HFAs. Discontinui- purpose of this joint session was to determine how ties with large magnetic shear angles are more effi- results from these focus groups can be combined cient to form HFAs. Current sheets with thickness to understand these effects on the dayside system from 1000 km to about 3162 km are more efficient from a global perspective. to form HFAs. HFAs are more likely to form when Terry Liu showed THEMIS observations of a the reflected flow from the bow shock is along the new ion and electron foreshock upstream of a fore- discontinuity. shock bubble's shock. Foreshock bubble's shock could be an additional accelerator and a particle 2. Dayside magnetopause processes and source for the parent shock acceleration. Sanni transport Hoilijoki and Heli Hietala presented, on behalf of The “Transient phenomena at the Magne- Yann Pfau-Kempf, recent results obtained with the topause and Bow Shock and their Ground Signa- hybrid-Vlasov model Vlasiator. Magnetosheath per- tures” focus group jointed with the “Magnetic Re- turbations are found to deform the bow shock so connection in the Magnetosphere” and “Dayside that transient foreshock-like field-aligned ion Kinetic Processes in Global Solar Wind- 3 Magnetosphere Interactions” FGs in the afternoon merging at two different magnetopause sites as of Tuesday (06/21/2016). This joint session had determined by favored merging geometries for the talks on observation and modeling with an empha- two components of the IMF. sis on global magnetospheric aspects of reconnec- On the theoretical side, Sanni Hoilijoki tion. Sun-Hee Lee showed that (1) the inverse dis- showed that reconnection rates at the dayside persions of energetic ions were observed by MMS/ magnetopause in a global hybrid-Vlasov simulation EIS in the magnetosheath just outside the magne- correlate well with the analytical model by Cassak topause and the observed ion structure can be ex- and Shay [2007]. In addition, their results indicate plained as the effect of a transient solar wind dy- that magnetosheath waves affect the reconnection namic pressure pulse, and (2) using combined rate. Xuanye Ma showed that magnetic reconnec- ground radar and MMS/EIS observations, they esti- tion with a super-critical perpendicular sheared mated a longitudinal extent of 1.5 RE for the recon- flow forms an expanding outflow region to main-

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