An empirical model of electron pitch angle distributions in the outer radiation belt based on Van Allen Probes data

DOI

Here, we present an empirical model of the equatorial electron pitch angle distributions, based on the Magnetic Electron Ion Spectrometer (MagEIS) instrument aboard the Van Allen Probes. The model was created for energies from 37 keV up to 2.65 MeV. The model uses the solar wind dynamic pressure as a driving parameter and has a continuous dependence on Lm, magnetic local time and activity. It works for L-shells from 3.05 up around 5.95. For each channel of the MagEIS instrument, there are two files with model coefficients, one for Pdyn <5.5-6 nPa (e.g., “Pijk_246_keV.dat’) , and the second one for very high dynamic pressure values above 5.5 nPa (e.g., “Pijk_246_keV_HIGH.dat’). The script to read both file types is provided (“read_coefs.py”), and the data format is explained in the readme file.

The model is based on fitting the pitch angle distributions with Fourier sine series up to degree 5. This gives three model coefficients, namely A1, A3 and A5, which are the modeled as a quadratic function of the solar wind dynamic pressure for each bin of 0.2L-1hr MLT. Then, the quadratic trend coefficients are expanded in L, sin(MLT) and cos(MLT), which ensures a continuous dependence on L, MLT and activity for each of the energy channels.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.2.7.2022.001
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1029/2022sw003053
Metadata Access http://doidb.wdc-terra.org/oaip/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:doidb.wdc-terra.org:7394
Provenance
Creator Smirnov, Artem ORCID logo; Shprits, Yuri ORCID logo; Allison, Hayley ORCID logo; Aseev, Nikita ORCID logo; Drozdov, Alexander ORCID logo; Kollmann, Peter ORCID logo; Wang, Dedong ORCID logo; Saikin, Anthony ORCID logo
Publisher GFZ Data Services
Contributor Smirnov, Artem; Shprits, Yuri; Allison, Hayley; Aseev, Nikita; Drozdov, Alexander; Kollmann, Peter; Wang, Dedong; Saikin, Anthony
Publication Year 2022
Funding Reference Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 318763901
Rights CC BY 4.0; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact Smirnov, Artem (GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany)
Representation
Resource Type Model
Version 1.1
Discipline Geosciences