Analysis of Cluster data with the publicly available GRMB (Geospace Region and Magnetospheric Boundary) dataset
- 1Institute of Atmospheric Physics CAS, Space Physicis, Prague 4, Czechia (grison@ufa.cas.cz)
- 2Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), Brussels, Belgium
- 3ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
The Cluster mission consists of 4 identical spacecraft, each carrying 11 scientific experiments. The spacecraft were launched in July and August 2000 into near polar inclined, 19x4 RE elliptic orbits. All four spacecraft are still in operation 23 years later. The magnetosphere environment is highly dynamic and its regions cannot be accessed by the orbital information alone. The purpose of this study is to develop a comprehensive dataset, providing information on Geospace Region and Magnetospheric Boundaries (GRMB) crossed by each of the four Cluster spacecraft, and to deliver it to the Cluster Science Archive (CSA).
The GRMB dataset provides a classification useful for the scientific community. Therefore, the methodology does not define what is a bow shock or what is a magnetopause. The goal is to have labeled regions that contain the bow-shocks or magnetopauses. And then each user can apply its own definition on the appropriate label subset.
The GRMB list contains two kinds of items:
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Regions: Magnetosphere, Magnetosheath, Lobe, Solar wind / Foreshock, Plasmasheet, Plasmasphere
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Transition regions: Bow shock TR, Magnetopause TR, Polar regions, Plasmasheet TR, Plasmapause TR
Transition regions can include properties matching several regions. For example, a bow shock TR can include short periods of solar wind or magnetosheath. Solar wind and magnetosheath should not include bow shock crossings.
The GRMB dataset is based on more than 40 data products available at CSA, taken from 7 instrument suites. The methodology relies on the visual identification of the boundaries between two consecutive GRMB items.
The methodology, the criteria applied for the boundary identification, and the dataset validation are presented. The dataset is not yet fully completed but the Cluster location is already available for more than 5 years per spacecraft.
The visualization of the regions, and their physical properties, crossed by the Cluster spacecraft during several years, illustrates the scientific interest of this dataset.
How to cite: Grison, B., Darrouzet, F., Maggiolo, R., Hayosh, M., and Taylor, M.: Analysis of Cluster data with the publicly available GRMB (Geospace Region and Magnetospheric Boundary) dataset, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-13267, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-13267, 2024.
