Global magnetospheric model validation through data comparisons

Michael Wiltberger
Department of Physics, Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, NH

Global magnetohydrodynamic simulations have been used to study the couple solar wind - magnetosphere - ionosphere system for well over a decade and are now making accurate qualitative and quantitative predictions of the state magnetosphere - ionosphere system under a variety of solar wind conditions. We have used the Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry global MHD code (LFM) in conjunction with observations from the WIND and ACE spacecraft to simulate the magnetosphere under a variety of conditions including storms and substorms. The first portion of this talk will present a brief discussion of the numerical techniques used to solve the ideal MHD equations in the magnetospheric portion of the simulation. Model validation with data is accomplished with two different techniques. The first is to make direct comparison with observations. These typically include comparisons with in situ measurements made by spacecraft such as GEOTAIL, POLAR, GOES, DMSP, and LANL as well as ground based magnetometer measurements and models driven by SuperDARN observations. The second technique is to compare the the simulation results with statistical studies such as superpose epoch analysis and empirical models. All of these comparisons indicate that the LFM can accurately model this coupled system as well as provide directions for further model improvement.