BARREL Daily update Aug. 9th 2016

Hej och god morgon (Hi and good morning), 

Update Summary

Important news about MMS. MMS has extended their burst collection region to include that of the BARREL locations. However, this also includes everything at higher L-values as well I believe. If you have say a magnetometer array, or riometer or a satellite that has seen something interesting in this region please contact them (Allison Jaynes or Drew Turner) within ~24 hours so that they can gather the data. 

Although we haven't yet had a CME, here's a fantastic tool to look at predicted arrival times. Different research groups will submit their modeled runs and predictions and then after the event has arrived (or missed us) a scoreboard is created to see which models captured which aspects of the solar event. http://kauai.ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/CMEscoreboard/ . (see below, but this may be very useful for the coming week, fingers crossed) These research models serve two purposes. 1st) as they are shown to be more and more accurate they can be turned into forecasting tools that NOAA and others use. 2nd) It helps us determine what physics we've got right, what we're missing, and how different modeling techniques affect the results and which ones are better for different processes ect. 

The stratospheric winds are  currently still very fast and westward which gives estimate flight times of only 1-3 hours if we were to launch tomorrow.  So, we are NOT going to attempt to launch tomorrow.  

The good news is that the upper level wind predictions for a few days from now show that it is starting to change. So, we may soon be are entering turnaround in the next couple of days which would give us a first possible launch Saturday evening (Aug 14) in order to be up at float altitude for the conjunction with Van Allen Probes early in the morning on Aug. 15th. 

In talks with the CCMC crew, it sounds like there is likely going to be an active region which has the possibility of producing Earthward directed CME's coming around the Earthward side of the disk. If this region were to explode and produce such a CME, it would likely hit us in about a weeks time, so fingers crossed that we get some great space weather in time for the Sunday conjunction

News from Kiruna

Next possible launch date - Evening of Aug. 14th for the early morning conjunction on Aug. 15th

Payloads up:

none
Payloads coming/which came down:

none

News from Van Allen Probes:
Summary

The lapping event is happening I think tomorrow. (this is when the two spacecraft come very close together. Interesting science often comes out of these events. Specifically, we can see if the waves or particle populations observed at the spacecraft are the same or different. This allows us to determine the scale size, or how large the different regions are.)

News from MMS: 
MMS team needs to know within 24 hours if you would like them to download data. E-mail Drew Turner or Allison Jaynes if you would like them to collect data in a specific region/time for conjunction studies.  

Space Weather  from Spaceweather.com, SWPC.noaa.gov,  and Kyoto (possibly others as well)

Kiruna Magnetometer:  http://www.irf.se/Observatory/?link=Magnetometers

May be an EMIC wave around noon but it's unclear if it's band limited or just part of the broad band waves. 

(EMIC waves are a type of wave that ends up affecting how quickly relativistic, or very high energy, electrons are lost into the Earth's upper atmosphere. This lost population of electrons produces X-rays which can be observed by the BARREL instrumentation as well as creates changes in the upper atmospheric chemistry.)

Finnish Magnetometer Array: http://www.sgo.fi/Data/Pulsation/latestPulsation.php

EMIC waves observed around noon at Kilpisjarvi, IVALO, and maybe a few others but they become incredibly faint. 

Scandinavian Riometer data http://sgo.fi/Data/Riometer/latestRiometer.php

Just a reminder Riometers are not my area of expertise, but it does look like there may have been precipitation from around 15 UT - 23 UT yesterday. 

NOAA GOES Electron Flux:
Some activity but fairly nominal levels. 

NOAA GOES Proton Flux:
nominal levels.

ACE Solar wind speed: 

Vsw =  617.3 km/s

ACE Solar proton density:

density =  1.8 protons/cm^3

(High solar wind speeds, when combined with high densities can compress the Earth's magnetosphere and generate waves and ultimately loss of radiation belt particles to the Earth's atmosphere as well as loosing some of the radiation belt particles back out to space. When you then combine this with a strong southward Bz component (see below) you often get geomagnetic storms. When you have geomagnetic storms you often get aurora. The stronger the storm the further equator ward you are likely to see the aurora!) 

Sunspot number from SDO/HMI: 
91 and Sunspot AR2571 has a beta-gamma complexity which means that there is at a slightly higher chance for an M-class solar flare. Currently it looks like if we were so lucky for it to produce a CME, it may be Earth directed. There are a few more larger sunspot regions which are coming around the disk and may produce Earth directed CMEs in a few days giving a potential arrival time of about 1 week from now. This is all speculative at the moment but stay tuned! 

NOAA GOES Flare activity:

6-hr max C2 

24 hr max C8

NOAA/SWPC Kp:
kp =   3 with a 24 hour max of kp = 4

ACE SW magnetic field:

Bz = 4.3 nT South

Btotal =  5.6 nT

ESA/NASA/SOHO Coronal hole news
The high speed stream has reached the Earth and the solar wind velocity is expected to stay high until about August 12th according to the WSA-ENLIL models housed at SWP NOAA. However, if Bz continues to fluctuate we may not expect a geomagnetic storm associated with the HSS. Hopefully though we'll get some nice substorm activity. 

Realtime Kyoto AE:

Possibly substorm around 4:00UT and 9:30 UT today. 

Realtime Kyoto Dst:

Very quiet. 

Swedish Phrase of a the Day: https://www.innovativelanguage.com/word-of-the-day/swedish 

Min favoritämne i skolan är matte

My favorite subject in school is math. 

And because today's word is math, and we all love math, a few more 

enkel matematik

simple math

matematiskt problem

mathematics problem

Svara på matematiktalet

Answer the math problem

Hej då och god kväll från Kiruna (Good bye and good evening from Kiruna), 

Alexa and the BARREL team.