FG: Comparative Planetary Magnetospheric Processes

Dates: 2023 – 2027
Leaders: George Clark John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab george.clark at jhuapl.edu, Wen Li Boston University wenli77 at bu.edu, Bob Marshall University of Colorado Boulder robert.marshall at colorado.edu, Dan Gershman NASA Goddard Space Flight Center daniel.j.gershman at nasa.gov, Peter Delamere University of Alaska Fairbanks padelamere at alaska.edu, Shannon Curry University of California, Berkeley smcurry at berkeley.edu
Research Areas: Primary – SWMI, Secondary – MPS

Topic Description

The Solar System is gifted with a diverse array of magnetospheric systems, from the familiar Dungey-cycle-driven system at Earth, to the extreme Vasyliunas-cycle-driven Gas Giants, to the unmagnetized-solar wind interactions found at Mars and Venus. Together, this diverse set of planetary magnetospheres makes it possible to probe fundamental physical processes by exploring how and under what conditions they operate in and across the Solar System. Furthermore, if we can make sense of this large parameter regime then not only will we improve our understanding of the geospace environment, but we may be able to close the gap in our understanding of plasma physics elsewhere in the cosmos, e.g., magnetospheres of pulsars and brown dwarfs. However, to reach that goal, it requires the Earth and Planetary space physics communities to give serious consideration to the physics behind the similarities and differences between these systems. That brings us to the primary goal of this focus group (FG)—to assess the physical processes within our Solar System that ultimately shape these planetary magnetospheric environments with the aim of uncovering parameter regimes associated with distinct and universal mechanisms.

Studying all the processes is an overwhelming and unrealistic task, so we propose the following key comparative topics that directly relate to the active GEM focus groups: 1) comparative magnetotail dynamics and their effects on the transport of mass, momentum, energy, and magnetic flux; 2) comparative planetary radiation belts and ring currents and the processes that source and sustain them across drastically different magnetospheres; 3) comparative magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling mechanisms, e.g., precipitation, acceleration, outflow, and drivers across solar wind driven, internally driven, and induced magnetospheres. Even still this list is quite broad relative to the typical GEM FGs; however, one of the main objectives of this FG is to establish GEM as the leading forum where comparative planetary magnetospheric processes are workshopped to foster interactions between communities. In a way, this is similar to the original NSF initiative that led to the GEM program where we are aiming to form a community consensus on the outstanding questions that can be addressed on a few year time scale. Therefore, our expectation is that after we establish the big open questions that are common across planetary magnetospheres, we can then workshop those by making novel use of the datasets and modelling outputs available.

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