Work Description

Date: 14 February, 2025

Dataset Title: Dataset for Simulating extreme space weather with kinetic magnetotail reconnection

Dataset Contact: Timothy Keebler [email protected]

Dataset Creators:
Name: Timothy B. Keebler
Email: [email protected]
Institution: University of Michigan Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4570-6416

Name: Gabor Toth
Email: [email protected]
Institution: University of Michigan Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8459-2100

Name: Yuxi Chen
Email: [email protected]
Institution: University of Michigan Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7288-2805

Name: Xiantong Wang
Email: [email protected]
Institution: University of Michigan Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8963-7432

Funding: NSF Grant #663800 (National Science Foundation PREEVENTS)

Key Points:
- Extreme space weather events have unique reconnection physics that requires coupling localized PIC to a global MHD model.
- We run two extreme events to study the impact of kinetic physics on reconnection and the global magnetosphere.
- The adaptively embedded PIC has significant influence on global and local geomagnetic indices under extreme driving.

Research Overview:
Extreme space weather events require particle-in-cell (PIC) modeling to capture the kinetic physics of magnetic reconnection that is not present in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models. The MHD with Adaptively Embedded Particle-In-Cell (MHD-AEPIC) model (Chen et al., 2020) builds on the operational Michigan Geospace space weather model by coupling the FLexible Exascale Kinetic Simulator (FLEKS) PIC code (Chen et al., 2023). The adaptive coupling selects the active PIC domain based on local criteria that identify potential reconnection sites. This saves computational cost compared to large static PIC regions while including full kinetic physics where necessary. Here, the PIC code is activated to follow a flapping plasma sheet and adaptively select areas of potential reconnection. This eliminates the need to constantly cover a huge volume with PIC for the entire simulation timeframe. Wang et al. (2022) shows the advantages of MHD-AEPIC in representing local particle distributions in the tail and producing global geomagnetic indices for a strong geomagnetic storm. We build on that work by applying the MHD-AEPIC model to two extreme geomagnetic storms, the Halloween 2003 and the November 2003 events, to investigate the impact of a kinetic description of tail reconnection for extreme solar wind driving. Adding the PIC code causes dramatic changes in magnetotail magnetic topology and in global geomagnetic indices for these events when compared to ideal MHD. Our simulations with the MHD-AEPIC model are robust under extreme driving conditions for both events, forming a foundation for exploring hypothetical driving conditions to assess the potential impacts of 'worst-case' storms.

References:
Chen, Y., Toth, G., Hietala, H., Vines, S. K., Zou, Y., Nishimura, Y., ... Markidis, S. (2020). Magnetohydrodynamic with embedded particle-in-cell simulation of the geospace environment modeling dayside kinetic processes challenge event. Earth and Space Science, 7. doi: 10.1029/2020EA001331
Chen, Y., Toth, G., Zhou, H., & Wang, X. (2023). Fleks: A flexible particle-in-cell code for multi-scale plasma simulations. Computer Phys. Comm., 287. doi: 10.1016/j.cpc.2023.108714
Wang, X., Chen, Y., & Toth, G. (2022). Global magnetohydrodynamic magnetosphere simulation with an adaptively embedded particle-in-cell model. J. Geophys. Res., 127, e2021JA030091. doi: 10.1029/2021JA030091

Methodology:
The data contained in this repository is standard model output from the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF). The SWMF and all necessary pre- and post-processing scripts are open-source under an Apache2 license, and are available at https://github.com/SWMFsoftware. The output has been written into an IDL-readable format using scripts available within the SWMF.

Instrument and/or Software specifications: NA

Files contained here:
The files provided here consist of simulation output from the SWMF runs of both the Halloween and November 2003 geomagnetic storms. Select 2D output is provided, as well as text files containing magnetic perturbations and geomagnetic indices. Finally, this repository contains several Python3 plotting scripts. Together, all data and scripts are present to recreate every figure from Keebler et al., 2025. The naming convention is
The folders show divisions based on each simulation conducted. Each folder contains 60 netcdf files (30 with atmospheric output and 30 with land model output) for June, July, and August (JJA) over 10 simulation years. The folders and simulations are described below:

Data Naming Convention: EventName_Model_DataType.ext

- EventName: either 'Halloween' or 'Nov2003' denoting the geomagnetic storm that generated the simulation or data

- Model: either 'MHDAEPIC' or 'Geospace' denoting the MHD-AEPIC or ideal MHD simulations respectively. Observations are labeled as 'Obs'.

- DataType: file contents can be a timeseries of magnetometer station (FRD or YKC), timeseries of interplanetary solar wind (IMF), SuperMAG magnetometer output (SuperMAG) with modifiers for included stations and indices, or 2D model slices in standard SWMF output with timestamps in the name.

- ext: file extensions are mostly standard text files with extension '.dat', or an IDL-readable format in standard SWMF output '.outs' file extension

Plotting Script Naming Convention: plot_FigureNum_EventName_Desc.py

- FigureNum: in format 'figureXX' with XX as the two-digit figure number from Keebler et al. (2025). Figures go from 01 to 12.

- EventName: either 'halloween' or 'nov2003' denoting the geomagnetic storm that generated the simulation or data. Note these are all lowercase.

- Desc: description of plotted data. Includes 'grid' for grid resolution, 'imf' for solar wind driving conditions, 'smr' for SuperMAG symmetrical ring current index, 'uex' for electron x velocity and y=0 cut planes, 'plasmoid' for time series of magnetotail plasmoid release, 'reconnectionrate' for x-line slices, 'supermag' for SuperMAG SMU/SML/SME indices, and 'gmd' for ground magnetic disturbance.

Related publication(s):
Keebler, T.B., et al. (2025). Simulating extreme space weather with kinetic magnetotail reconnection. Space Weather. Forthcoming.

Use and Access:
This data set is made available under a Creative Commons Public Domain license (CC0 1.0).

To Cite Data:
Keebler, T.B., Toth, G., Chen, Y., & Wang, X. (2025). Simulating extreme space weather with kinetic magnetotail reconnection [Data set]. University of Michigan - Deep Blue. https://doi.org/