Results from the Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry global magnetospheric model for the electrojet challenge

This paper presents the results from the Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry global magnetosphere model (LFM) for the Electrojet prediction challenge sponsored by the Space Environment Center (SEC). The SEC selected the March 19-20, 1999 interval, a period with relatively simple solar wind conditions, as an initial test bed for methods of predicting the strength and location the auroral electrojets. The challenge consisted of predicting responses of ground magnetometers using a near real-time model driven by ACE solar wind observations and/or input from real-time magnetometer stations geographically isolated from the target output stations. The LFM was run in a real time mode using input from ACE to drive the simulation for the entire 2 day period. The currents extracted from the ionospheric portion of the simulation were used with a Biot-Savart integration technique to determine the ground magnetic field perturbations for the target output stations. The results indicate the simulation predicts electrojets which are wider in latitudinal extent than the observations and that the current strength in the afternoon sector is larger than inferred from the observations. In general, the results show the simulation can qualitatively reproduce the observations but, the RMS errors indicate significant disparity between the observations and the predictions from the LFM.