2013 Radiation Belts Workshop: Comprehending, Specifying and Forecasting their Dynamics

3D Data assimilation in the radiation belts

1 Jul 2013, 15:00

30m

Island of Santorini, Greece (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini)

Oral Specification Models of the Radiation Belts: Radiation Environment Data Analyses/Validation Specification Models of the Radiation Belts

Speaker

Prof. Yuri Shprits (UCLA/ MIT/Skoltech)

Description

Significant progress has been done in recent years in application of the data assimilation tools to the radiation belt research. Previous studies concentrated on the analysis of radial profiles of phase space density using multi-satellite measurements and radial transport models. In this study we present analysis of the 3D phase space density using the VERB-3D code blended with CRRES observations by means of operator-splitting Kalman filtering. Assimilation electron fluxes at various energies and pitch-angles into the model allows us to utilize a vast amount of data including information on pitch-angle distributions and radial energy spectra. 3D data assimilation of the radiation belts allows us to differentiate between various acceleration and loss mechanisms. We present reanalysis of the radiation belts and find tell-tale signatures of various physical processes.