Bivariate Extreme Value Analysis for Space Weather Risk Assessment:
solar wind - magnetosphere driving in the terrestrial system
Abstract
As society moves towards greater dependence on technology, understanding
and predicting extreme Space Weather becomes increasingly important.
Indeed, the complex, simultaneous interplay between multiple phenomena
can unpack further insight into Space Weather effects. Thanks to decades
of in-situ and ground observations, long archives of Space Weather
measurements are ripe for exploitation by more complex, data intensive
techniques. In this study, three decades of in-situ and ground
observations of Earth’s Space environment are leveraged to model the
joint extremal behaviour of solar wind driving and internal geomagnetic
responses, using Bivariate Extreme Value Analysis. While often utilised
in other fields with more long-term and/or higher spatial resolution
datasets (such as meteorology), this is the first application of this
technique in more than one dimension in the field of space plasma
physics. An initial result is that upstream and internal variables
exhibit weaker extremal dependence on minute timescales than on hourly
timescales, in line with characteristic magnetospheric coupling
timescales. Specifically, the joint extremal behaviour of a solar wind
coupling function with the auroral electrojet index AE is explored and
predicted. This modelling enables estimation of a 75-year return period
for the 2003 Halloween geomagnetic storm.