Radial Response of Outer Radiation Belt Relativistic Electrons During
Enhancement Events at Geostationary Orbit
Abstract
Forecasting relativistic electron fluxes at geostationary Earth orbit
(GEO) has been a long term goal of the scientific community, and
significant advances have been made in the past, but the relation to the
interior of the radiation belts, that is, to lower $L-$shells is still
not clear. In this work we have identified 60 relativistic electron
enhancement events at GEO to study the radial response of outer belt
fluxes and the correlation between the fluxes at GEO and those at lower
$L-$shells. The enhancement events occurred between 1 October 2012 and
31 December 2017 and were identified using GOES 15 $>$2
MeV fluxes at GEO, which we have used to characterize the radial
response of the radiation belt, by comparing to fluxes measured by the
Van Allen probes ECT-REPT between $2.55.0$, and generally similar for
$L>4.5$. Post enhancement maximum fluxes show a
remarkable correlation for all $L > 4.0$ although the
magnitude of the pre-existing fluxes on the outer belt plays a
significant role and makes the ratio of pre-to-post enhancement fluxes
less predictable in the region $4.0