RAPID: Improving DMSP SSIES-3 data to level-2 quality

University Of Texas At Dallas, Richardson TX

Investigators

Abstract

This RAPID award provides for the development and re-analysis of the database of ionospheric measurement parameters (the three-dimensional ion flow, ion temperature, ion density, election temperature, and ion composition) from the Special Sensors-Ions, Electrons, and Scintillation(SSIES) instruments on multiple Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) spacecrafts. Thus, combining the output from the four SSIES instruments produces the complete three-dimensional flow vector of the thermal plasma, the plasma density and composition, along with the temperature of the ions and the electrons. The total extent of these measurements from all of these satellites consists of over 90 satellite years of data from 1987 through the present. These results taken as a whole represents an extremely valuable resource of scientific information for ionospheric and magnetospheric physics studies. However, the DMSP data starting in 2003 from the third generation of the instruments (SSIES-3 starting with F16) that comprise over 30 satellite-years are only available to the geospace community at a level-1 quality with no quality flags to identify bad data caused by an incorrect assumption about the ion composition of the plasma sampled. If these data were available at a reliable level-2 or level-3 quality that could be used directly for scientific and modeling work without further need for any processing, these new results would enable significant advances in research in space science and space weather efforts. This is especially true for the case of multiple DMSP satellites with level-2 quality data where the inclusion of data over multiple orbits and multiple satellites would help enhanced the extended coverage of the ionospheric and magnetospheric regions that might be achieved by data assimilation combined with first-principle physics-based modeling. The boarder impact of such a database is quite xtensive as many science studies are expected to emerge once these Level-2 results have been transferred to the database. The justification of this award as a RAPID award is the fact that the two PIs are planning retirement within the next few months. Consequently, it is expected that the work supported by this award would never take place. The absence of these data products would then represent a major loss to the space physics community. The two PIs propose a pilot study doing the initial work to develop the improved data reduction code and quality flag classification routines to produce level-2 quality SSIES-3 data for public distribution and use. The effort would concentrate upon analyzing the data for the year 2012 for the three satellites: F16, F17, and F18. This year is of especial interest because it is the year of solar maximum activity. Moreover, several major geomagnetic storms occurring in this year would be studied. These improved analysis software routines would then be available for subsequent use to apply to the remainder of the DMSP database. This initial effort would provide the basis for estimating the expense required to apply these improved codes to all of the remaining data. The results from this effort would be distributed to the community through the Madrigal data base hosted by MIT Haystack Observatory.