CEDAR email: Invitation to SAPS Focus Study at joint GEM-CEDAR workshop

[Naomi Maruyama]

**

*****Dear**Colleagues**,*

*

At the upcoming CEDAR-GEM workshop, the GEM SIMIC focus group and the 
CEDAR Grand**Challenges “Storms and substorms without borders” (SSWB) 
will hold a joint session that will be organized around our new 
“Sub-Auroral Polarization Streams (SAPS) Focus Study”. On behalf of the 
SIMIC and SSWB organizers, I would like to invite you to participate in 
this focus study and contribute to our workshop.


**

The description of the “focus study” is included in the end of the 
message. If you are interested, please let us know as soon as possible 
if you will attend, and if you plan to contribute. The final format of 
the workshop will be decided later.

**

**

*We would like to make our study very unique, completely different from 
"another GEM challenge" which tends to focus on skill scores etc. Our 
goal is to make significant improvement of our scientific understanding 
of M-I-T coupling regarding SAPS. We need your help to accomplish our goal.*

**

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.


Regards,

organizers*:*
Naomi Maruyama, Stan Sazykin, Mike Ruohoniemi*, Phil Erickson*, Simon 
Shepherd, *Tony Mannucci, *Jo Baker
**

*
------------------------------------------------------------------------

*
*

*###### *SAPS Focus Study *######*

*

SAPS electric field structures are narrow channels of westward flows 
(poleward electric fields) encountered both in the subauroral ionosphere 
and the conjugate inner**magnetosphere during a variety of geomagnetic 
conditions, including geomagnetic storms main and recovery phases, as 
well as during non-storm periods of variable**convection and during 
substorms. These channels are localized primarily in the 
dusk-to-midnight local time sector equatorward of the auroral oval 
boundary. On some**occasions, they are observed to persist for many 
hours. The spatial localization and the pronounced structured nature of 
SAPS channels make them an ideal focus for**targeted investigations of 
our current understanding of the physics of the magnetosphere-ionosphere 
coupling processes involved in the generation and evolution of**SAPS, 
and for testing the capabilities of numerical models to reproduce the 
observed phenomena.

**

We therefore invite theorists, modelers, and experimentalists to 
participate in a collaborative effort focused on the physics of SAPS, 
with the initial round of discussion**taking place at the 2016 summer 
CEDAR-GEM workshop. For this first phase, we invite contributions that 
present simulation results of the subauroral ionospheric 
electric**fields for several selected intervals. The intervals were 
selected based on available observations:

*

 1. *

    March 16, 2013 04-10 UT (pre-storm SAPS);

    *
 2. *

    March 17, 2013 06-20 UT (main phase SAPS);

    *
 3. *

    March 20, 2013 04-10 UT (recovery phase SAPS);

    *
 4. *

    June 16, 2015, 06-10 UT (non-storm conditions);

    *
 5. ***June 1*7*, 2015, 06-10 UT (non-storm conditions)*.**

*
*

*Along with predicted subauroral electric fields in the afternoon to 
post-midnight MLT sector, contributions should include, if possible, 
relevant electrodynamic quantities**such as  ionospheric conductivities, 
inner magnetospheric particle and fields distributions, total electron 
content (TEC), field-aligned currents, magnetic field**perturbations, or 
anything else that may help in unraveling the dynamics of plasma 
processes involved in the formation of SAPS.*

*

At the workshop, we invite participants to engage in a robust discussion 
of the nature of SAPS, the role of plasma instabilities, the control of 
occurrence of SAPS by solar**wind and IMF parameters, ionospheric 
preconditioning influence on SAPS appearance, and the role of the inner 
magnetospheric pressure-bearing plasma in determining**SAPS lifetimes. 
In addition to numerical simulations, we welcome presentations that 
address observations of SAPS and related effects (both in the ionosphere 
and the**magnetosphere) in the coupled M-I-T system relevant to the 
selected events.


Results should be sent to the workshop organizers (at least two weeks 
before the workshop). A more detailed description of the SAPS focused 
collaborative study, with**background information on the selected 
intervals, will be available at the following URL:

<http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/community/CEDAR_ITM/cedar-grand.php>http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/community/CEDAR_ITM/cedar-grand.php

which will also serve as a repository for contributions and results.



Description of the workshop:

<http://cedarweb.vsp.ucar.edu/wiki/index.php/2015_Workshop:Storms_and_Substorms_Without_Borders#CEDAR_Science_Challenge>*http://cedarweb.vsp.ucar.edu/wiki/index.php/2016_Workshop:MIT_Coupling#Description* 



Description of the GEM SIMIC focus group:

<http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/gemwiki/index.php/FG:_Storm-Time_Inner_Magnetosphere-Ionosphere_Convection>http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/gemwiki/index.php/FG:_Storm-Time_Inner_Magnetosphere-Ionosphere_Convection



*

-- 
--------------------------------------
Naomi Maruyama
CIRES, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
phone: +1 303-497-4857
email:naomi.maruyama at noaa.gov

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