EGU22-6611, updated on 29 Dec 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6611
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

A Neural Network-Based Model of the Relativistic Electrons Fluxes in the Outer Radiation Belt

Xiangning Chu1, Donglai Ma2, Jacob Bortnik2, W Kent Tobiska3, Alfredo Cruz3, S. Dave Bouwer3, Hong Zhao4, Qianli Ma2,5, Kun Zhang6, Daniel N. Baker1, Xinlin Li1, Harlan Spence7, and Geoffrey D Reeves8
Xiangning Chu et al.
  • 1Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA
  • 2Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA
  • 3Space Environment Technologies, Pacific Palisades, CA, USA
  • 4Department of Physics, Auburn University, AL, USA
  • 5Center for Space Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
  • 6Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO, USA
  • 7Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA
  • 8Space Science and Applications Group, Los Alamos National Lab, Los Alamos, NM, USA

We present a machine-learning-based model of relativistic electron fluxes >1.8 MeV using a neural network approach in the Earth's outer radiation belt. The Outer RadIation belt Electron Neural net model for Relativistic electrons (ORIENT-R) uses only solar wind conditions and geomagnetic indices as input. For the first time, we show that the state of the outer radiation belt can be determined using only solar wind conditions and geomagnetic indices, without any initial and boundary conditions. The most important features for determining outer radiation belt dynamics are found to be AL, solar wind flow speed and density, and SYM-H indices. ORIENT-R reproduces out-of-sample relativistic electron fluxes with a correlation coefficient of 0.95 and an uncertainty factor of ∼2. ORIENT-R reproduces radiation belt dynamics during an out-of-sample geomagnetic storm with good agreement to the observations. In addition, ORIENT-R was run for a completely out-of-sample period between March 2018 and October 2019 when the AL index ended and was replaced with the predicted AL index (lasp.colorado.edu/home/personnel/xinlin.li). It reproduces electron fluxes with a correlation coefficient of 0.92 and an out-of-sample uncertainty factor of ∼3. Furthermore, ORIENT-R captured the trend in the electron fluxes from low-earth-orbit (LEO) SAMPEX, which is a completely out-of-sample data set both temporally and spatially. In sum, the ORIENT-R model can reproduce transport, acceleration, decay, and dropouts of the outer radiation belt anywhere from short timescales (i.e., geomagnetic storms) and very long timescales (i.e., solar cycle) variations.

How to cite: Chu, X., Ma, D., Bortnik, J., Tobiska, W. K., Cruz, A., Bouwer, S. D., Zhao, H., Ma, Q., Zhang, K., Baker, D. N., Li, X., Spence, H., and Reeves, G. D.: A Neural Network-Based Model of the Relativistic Electrons Fluxes in the Outer Radiation Belt, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-6611, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6611, 2022.