Satellite Data Intercalibrationof Ring Current Observations

The Earth’s ring current is a complex, dynamic system that plays an important role in geomagnetic storms. This ring-shaped current environment changes its structure and intensity on different time scales as a result from the incoming solar wind.  The different particle populations display very different behaviors, making it extremely hard to develop physics-based forecasting models for this environment.

Satellite data provides electron point measurements that can be used to study the different physical processes occurring in the Earth’s magnetospheric ring current. However, in order to fully understand the particle dynamics and injection processes in this region, high temporal and spatial data resolutions are required.

We tackle this issue by using a combination of electron-flux observations from different satellite missions and instruments in order to improve the global resolution of this dynamic environment by intercalibrating POES, GOES, THEMIS and RBSP. To illustrate a use for this combined data set, we present a global reconstruction of the ring current population and a comparison of the observed electron flux environment with a re-analysis of the ring current region.