May 18, 2018, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

May 18, 2018, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm, Heliophysics Director's Seminar, Hosted by the Geospace Physics Laboratory (673)

The spark of crowdsourced opportunities & outcomes for Heliophysics

Liz MacDonald (GSFC)

What does crowdsourcing have to do with Heliophysics? Crowdsourcing provides a new avenue to scientific observations and public participation in research. The public is keenly interested in our science and able to participate in ways that are not just meaningful, but also disruptive, and lead to innovation. I will share examples from 5 years of running Aurorasaurus, the first citizen science project about the beautiful aurora. Citizen scientists can increase their chances to see aurora, contribute to helping others see aurora, help scientists improve very coarse models of aurora, and actively learn more about space physics in the process. Recently, citizen scientists have even captured features of aurora-like arcs not previously described in the literature at subauroral latitudes and contributed to ground-breaking new publications and understanding. The new finding that the "STEVE" structure is a visible sign of a subauroral ion drift (SAID) has received worldwide attention and is published in MacDonald et al., Science Advances, 2018 (http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/3/eaaq0030.full). These new interdisciplinary methodologies may be especially well-suited to our field, and I will highlight other space physics examples and opportunities as well.

Modeling the sources and impacts of near-Earth plasma

Alex Glocer (GSFC)

Earth's magnetosphere is formed by the complex interaction of the solar wind with Earth's intrinsic magnetic field. All of the plasma in this region is derived from either the solar wind or the planet itself. It is now well accepted that the ionosphere is a critical source of plasma for the magnetosphere, providing O+, H+, as well as other ions which can have wide ranging consequences for the space environment system. Plasma of ionospheric origin is known to be a dominant contributor to the ring current plasma during storms, and can alter the reconnection. A myriad of mechanisms is frequently invoked to drive ionospheric outflows. This talk will present recent improvements to the Polar Wind Outflow Model (PWOM) to simulate the global outflow solution, and will describe simulation results examining the competing effects and interplay between different outflow mechanisms in the cusp, aurora, and polar cap. We will also examine the consequences of these processes in terms of supplying plasma to the magnetosphere by including the outflow into global multi-fluid MHD simulations of the magnetosphere.