Results of computer simulation of near Earth space is looked at in a new way to understand how energy moves around the global system. It is found that in addition to a pathway of energy from the outside into the system and back again there is an internal loop which recirculates energy. These new methods will greatly improve our understanding how the whole magnetosphere system evolves and will help address evolution of processes that have space weather impacts.
Austin Brenner, Tuija I. Pulkkinen, Qusai Al Shidi, et al. Dissecting Earth’s Magnetosphere: 3D Energy Transport in a Simulation of a Real Storm Event. ESS Open Archive . August 04, 2023.
The goal of this simulation was to examine the spread of magnetic reconnection across the dayside magnetopause upon the arrival of a tangential discontinuity of the interplanetary magnetic field from a purely northward to southward configuration. Simple solar wind conditions were used to give us input into the system. A very high resolution grid setup was used in BATS-R-US.
