Report on the 1998 GEM Snowmass Workshop

Working Group 2 - Radiation Belts


REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE RADIATION BELTS WORKING GROUP
INNER MAGNETOSPHERE / STORMS CAMPAIGN
1998 SNOWMASS WOKSHOP

1) From the 1998 Snowmass Workshop onwards it was decided to have two working
groups instead of three. The ring current and plasmasphere
working groups were combined into a single working group and the energetic
electron working group was expanded to include all of the radiation
belts. The new working groups are:
Working Group 1: Plasmasphere and Ring Current
Working Group 2: Radiation Belts

2) Xinlin Li gave the radiation belts tutorial on "Radiation Belt Electrons:
Current Understanding and Remaining Problems". John Wygant gave the other
IM/S tutorial on "Structure and Dynamics of the Large-Scale Electric Field
During Major Geomagnetic Storms".

3) IM/S campaign participants discussed how the IM/S campaign interfaces with
and/or contributes to the objectives of the GGCM. Also, key issues for the
IM/S campaign were discussed and listed and a strategy to address these
issues was developed. See http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/gem/docs/overview.html
and http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/gem/docs/strategy.html for details.

4) It was decided to pick three geomagnetic storms for study in campaign
mode. It was agreed to consider adding 1-2 storms per year in order to focus
the GEM activities on the intercomparison of storm features.

5) Janet Kozyra put together some excellent web pages that were the basis for
the selection of the GEM storms at the mini-workshop in December 1998.
Information and data sets for the IM/S storms are contained in the web
page http://leadbelly.lanl.gov/GEM_Storms/GEMstorms.html, which is maintained
by Geoff Reeves.

Submitted by Geoff Reeves and Anthony Chan