PlanetarySeminar: The importance of nonlinear physics in radiation belt modelling

At 14:00 on Wednesday September 29th, 2021, Dr Oliver Allanson from the University of Exeter will be presenting a seminar titled: “The importance of nonlinear physics in radiation belt modelling”. The seminar will be accessible via Teams.

Abstract: “The Earth’s Outer Radiation Belt is a region of near-Earth space containing high-energy charged particles that are trapped by the geomagnetic field, and it is very challenging to model these particle populations. Accurate modelling and prediction is important for safeguarding the operational satellites in orbit that underpin modern society – placing a growing reliance on forecasts such as those based on the model developed at the British Antarctic Survey (now being incorporated into the UK MET Office Space Weather suite via SWIMMR). Existing radiation belt modelling and forecasting capabilities rely upon ‘quasilinear’ techniques that treat electromagnetic waves as having very small amplitudes. However, recent satellite datasets have demonstrated the prevalence of large amplitude (aka ‘nonlinear’) electromagnetic waves. Understanding the impact of nonlinear waves on space weather modelling is therefore an important question – and I hope to try and find some answers! In this talk I will give some review, and discuss recent and planned work. Looking forward!”