The Solar Wind Driven Magnetosphere-Ionosphere System

A National Science Foundation Project for Forecasting the Geomagnetic Activity from
the Solar-Wind-Magnetosphere-Ionosphere at the University of Texas at Austin

Group Members:

Wendell Horton: webpage
Vernon Wong
Jim Van Dam
Rowena Ball : webpage
Jane Pratt
M. Leila Mays
Edmund Spencer(PhD 2006), now at Utah State University, Center for Space Engineering
Manish Mithaiwala (PhD 2005), now at NRL
Isidoros Doxas, now at University of Colorado at Boulder, Center for Integrated Plasma Studies
Educational Tools: Space Science Teaching Tools and Space Physics Concept Inventory (SPCI)
Chris Crabtree, Ph.D. (2003), now at University of California, Irvine
Bob Weigel, Ph.D. (2000), now at University of Colorado, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics: webpage

General Information and Recent Publications:

Current Real Time WINDMI AL and Dst Results

W. Horton, M. L. Mays, P. Brady, T. Ditmire, A. Ponomarenko, and Y. Zakharov (2007), Laboratory Dipole-Target Experiments to Simulate Solar Wind-Magnetopshere Interactions, invited talk presented at 9th International Workshop on the Interrelationship between Plasma Experiments in Laboratory and Space (IPELS), Cairns, Australia, 5-10 August.
Mays, M. L., W. Horton, J. Kozyra, T. H. Zurbuchen, C. Huang, and E. Spencer (2007), Effect of Interplanetary Shocks on the AL and Dst Indices, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L11104, doi:10.1029/2007GL029844.
Spencer, E., W. Horton, M. L. Mays, I. Doxas, and J. Kozyra (2007), Analysis of the 3-7 October 2000 and 15-24 April 2002 geomagnetic storms with an optimized nonlinear dynamical model, J. Geophys. Res., 112, A04S90, doi:10.1029/2006JA012019.
M. L. Mays, O. C. St. Cyr, E. Quemerais, J.-L.Bertaux, S. Yashiro, and R. Howard (2007), An Attempt to Detect Coronal Mass Ejections in Lyman-alpha using SOHO SWAN, Solar Physics, 241(1), 113-125, doi:10.1007/s11207-007-0196-8.
E. Spencer, W. Horton, I. Doxas (2006), The dynamics of storms and substorms with the WINDMI model, J. Adv. Space Res., 38 (8), pp. 1657-1668, doi:10.1016/j.asr.2006.02.013.
E. Spencer, Analysis of Geomagnetic Storms and Substorms with the WINDMI model, Dissertation, 2006.
Real Time WINDMI Results
Space Physics Teaching Modules
Horton, W., B.-Y. Xu, H. V. Wong, and J. W. Van Dam (2004), Nonlinear dynamics of the firehose instability in a magnetic dipole geotail, J. Geophys. Res., 109, A09216, doi:10.1029/2003JA010288.
Edmund's qualifier file
Horton, W., E. Spencer, I. Doxas, and J. Kozyra (2005), Analysis of the October 3-7 2000 GEM storm with the WINDMI model, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L22102, doi:10.1029/2005GL023515.
M. J. Mithaiwala, W. Horton. Substorm Injections Produce Sufficient Electron Energization to Account for MeV Flux Enhancements Following Some Storms, J. Geophys. Res. Vol. 110, A07224, doi:10.1029/2004JA010511, July 2005
A table, 2005 WINDMI Parameters (pdf) for the Matlab code
2005 Windmi Model Code (Matlab, zip file) with 6 geomagnetic storms available for analysis.
W. Horton, Mithaiwala, M., and I. Doxas WINDMI-RC: A Family of Physics Network Models for Storms 2004.
Doxas, I., W. Horton, W-T Lin, S. Seibert, and M. J. Mithaiwala Dynamical Model for the Coupled Inner Magnetosphere and Tail. IEEE Trans. Plasma Science. 32. 4, 1443-1448. 2004.
H. Vernon Wong, B-Y. Xu, W. Horton, J. Pratt, and J. W. Van Dam. Nonlinear evolution of the firehose instability in a magnetic dipole geotail geometry.Feb 15, 2005.
Horton, W. C. Chiu, T. Ditmire, P. Valanju, R. Presura, V.V. Ivanov, Y. Sentoku, V.I. Sotnikov, A. Esaulov, N. Le Gaulloudec, T.E. Cowan, I. Doxas. Laboratory simulations of magnetopheric plasma shocks. Feb 15, 2005.
Horton, W. B.-Y. Xu, H. V. Wong. Firehose driven magnetic fluctuations in the Magnetosphere. preprint GRL 2004.
Crabtree, C., Ballooning Stability of the Earth's Magnetosphere, Dissertation, 2003.
IFS (University of Texas)
Laboratory Reports on Space and Astrophysics, selected Institute for Fusion Studies reports
WINDMI-Related Publications
Description of WINDMI variables and parameters
Data and code for analysis of 7 GEM storms with the WINDMI model
Report on the analysis of the GEM storms, 2003.
Plots of 117 Blanchard-McPherron substorm intervals

Publications, Presentations, and Reports:

Selected space physics references.
Lecture by W. Horton on Storms, Substorms and the Formation of the Radiation Belts.
Crabtree C, Horton W, Wong HV, Van Dam JW, Bounce-averaged stability of compressional modes in geotail flux tubes J GEOPHYS RES-SPACE 108 (A2): Art. No. 1084 FEB 20 2003
Doxas I, Horton W, Magnetospheric dynamics from a low-dimensional nonlinear dynamics model PHYS PLASMAS 6 (5): 2198-2204 Part 2 MAY 1999.
Doxas I, Horton W, Weigel R Using particle simulations for parameter tuning of dynamical models of the magnetotail J ATMOS SOL-TERR PHY 64 (5-6): 633-638 MAR-APR 2002.
Doxas I, Horton W, Smith JP A physics based nonlinear dynamical model for the solar wind driven magnetosphere-ionosphere system PHYS CHEM EARTH PT C 24 (1-3): 67-71 1999.
Doxas I, Horton W Magnetospheric dynamics from a low-dimensional nonlinear dynamics model PHYS PLASMAS 6 (5): 2198-2204 Part 2 MAY 1999,
Goode, Brent, John R. Cray, I. Doxas and W. Horton, Differentiating between colored random noise and deterministic chaos with the root mean square deviation J GEOPHYS RES-SPACE 106 (A10): 21277-21288 OCT 1 2001
Horton W, Pekker M, Doxas I, Magnetic energy storage and the nightside magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling GEOPHYS RES LETT 25 (21): 4083-4086 NOV 1 1998.
Horton, W., H. V. Wong, J. W. Van Dam and C. Crabtree, Stability properties of high-pressure geotail flux tube J GEOPHYS RES-SPACE 106 (A9): 18803-18822 SEP 1 2001.
Horton, W. Magnetospheres and the Space Weather Problem, November 14, 2001
Horton, W., R.S. Weigel, and J. C. Sprott, Chaos and the Limits of Predictability for the Solar-Wind driven Magnetosphere System, PHYS PLASMAS 8 (6): 2946-2952 JUN 2001.
Horton, W. R.S. Weigel, D. Vassiliadis, and I. Doxas, Substorm Classification with the WINDMI Model, In press in Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, 2003.
Horton, W. K. Noguchi, T. Tajima, The Coupling of the Parker Instability and the Balbus-Hawley Instability: An Important structural Agency in the Stellar and Planetary, 3rd International Conference on Laboratory Astrophysics with Intense Lasers, Rice University, 2000. (Figures)
Horton, W. and R.S. Weigel, Prediction properties of the WINDMI model for substorm databases, GEM 2000 summer workshop, June 19-23, Snowmass, CO.
Horton, W., HEDLA Presentation, Ann Arbor February 23, 2002
Horton W, Smith JP, Weigel R, Crabtree C, Doxas I, Goode B, Cary J, The solar-wind driven magnetosphere-ionosphere as a complex dynamical system, PHYS PLASMAS 6 (11): 4178-4184 NOV 1999
Hu, B., T. Petrosky and W. Horton, Chaotic Scattering and the Magneto-Coulomb Map, Physical Review E, 65:056212, 2002
Hu, B., W. Horton, C. Chiu and T. Petrosky, Coulomb Scattering in a Strong Magnetic Field, Physics of Plasmas, 9:1116-1124, 2002.
Smith, J.P. Jean-Luc Thiffeault, and Wendell Horton, Dynamical range of the WINDMI model: An exploration of possible magnetospheric plasma states.J GEOPHYS RES-SPACE 105 (A6): 12983-12996 JUN 1 2000.
Wong, H.V., W. Horton, J. W. Van Dam, and C. Crabtree Low frequency stability of geotail plasma , PHYS PLASMAS 8 (5): 2415-2424 Part 2 MAY 2001
Seibert, S. Data and code for analysis of 7 GEM storms with the WINDMI model
Seibert, S. Report on the analysis of the GEM storms, 2003.
Weigel, R.S., Prediction and Modeling of Substorms, Dissertation, December, 2000
Weigel, R.S., W. Horton, and I. Doxas, WINDMI Optimization and Performance Validation, IFS Report #899
Weigel, R.S., W. Horton, T. Tajima and T. Detman, Forecasting Auroral Electrojet Activity from Solar Wind Input with Neural Networks GEOPHYS RES LETT 26 (10): 1353-1356 MAY 15 1999.
Zataari, Ahmad, Jessi Ziser, W. Horton, Joydeep Ghosh and Gary Hallock, Connexus Proposal for Space Weather Prediction Filters

Space Plasma Physics Links

Figures for Space Physics