FOR 5405:  Magnetosphere, Ionosphere, Plasmasphere and Thermosphere as a coupled system (MIPT)

• Subject Area: Geosciences
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 462853228

There is a growing interest in space physics and space weather in a number of countries around the world including the United Kingdom (UK), Finland, Sweden, France, the United States (US), Japan, China and Germany. The harmful effects of space processes include radiation that can damage satellites, density variations in the ionosphere and plasmasphere that can disturb Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning and navigation, density variations in the thermosphere that render satellite orbit prediction and space debris tracking unreliable, and geomagnetically induced currents that can affect power grids. Increased dependence on technology in space, the miniaturization of satellite hardware, and future appearance of autonomous vehicles on highways are important reasons why space weather has attracted so much recent attention. To reach predictive capabilities in the future and to be able to evaluate the consequences of extreme events, it is of utmost importance to understand the interrelated processes in the Earth’s Magnetosphere, Ionosphere, Plasmasphere, and Thermosphere (MIPT). The overarching science objective of the research unit will be to better understand how the magnetosphere, ionosphere, plasmasphere, and thermosphere are coupled to each other. The complexity of this system which covers altitudes from tens to tens of thousands of km and over time scales from minutes to decades, requires an interdisciplinary team with experts in different domains, expertise in modeling and observations, as well as established collaborative ties to the international community. The work outlined in this proposal will advance our understanding of the coupled systems. The main overarching question is: how do the disturbances in the solar wind drive the coupled MIPT system and how do subsystems of MIPT influence each other on different time and spatial scales?

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Coordination Funds (Applicant Shprits, Ph.D., Yuri )
• Electron Seed Population and its impact on Ring current, Ionosphere and Thermosphere dynamics ESPRIT (Applicant Kronberg, Elena )
• Energy Deposition from the maGnetotail into the ionosphere/thermospherE (EDGE) (Applicant Kronberg, Elena )
• Modeling and forecasting of the electron density distribution within the ionosphere (Applicants Borries, Claudia ;  Gerzen, Tatjana ;  Schmidt, Michael )
• Observed change in the thermosphere and TI- coupling (Applicant Kusche, Jürgen )
• Topside ionospheric and plasmaspheric dynamics from observations, machine learning, and physics-based modeling. (Applicant Shprits, Ph.D., Yuri )
• Understanding the acceleration of ultra-relativistic electrons and its dependence on the plasma density (Applicant Shprits, Ph.D., Yuri )

• Spokesperson: Professor Yuri Shprits, Ph.D.