- 1Institute of Atmospheric Physics CAS, Space Physics, 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 have been in operation until September 2024. The magnetosphere environment is highly dynamic and its regions cannot be accessed by the orbital information alone. The purpose of the Geospace Region and Magnetospheric Boundary identification (GRMB) dataset is to provide information on the regions crossed by each of the 4 Cluster spacecraft.
The dataset includes 15 different labels, among them: plasmasphere, plasmapause transition region (TR), plasmasheet TR, plasmasheet, lobes, polar regions, magnetopause TR, magnetopause, magnetosheath, bow shock TR, and solar wind and foreshock. The 4 remaining labels are: inside the magnetosphere, outside the magnetosphere, unknown, and no available data. Transition regions can include properties matching the surrounding 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 Cluster 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 does not define what is a bow shock or what is a magnetopause, for example. 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.
In this study we present the different localization of the different regions based on the GRMB dataset. The properties (plasma density, plasma velocity, magnetic field, …) of different regions are also investigated to show the benefit of this dataset to perform scientific studies.
This dataset is now available at the Cluster Science Archive (CSA) for the years 2001-2022.
How to cite: Grison, B., Darrouzet, F., Maggiolo, R., Hajoš, M., and Taylor, M.: Localization of the Cluster satellites in geospace with the publicly available GRMB (Geospace Region and Magnetospheric Boundary) dataset, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-5258, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-5258, 2025.
