Radiation belt model including semi-annual variation and Solar driving
(Sentinel)
Abstract
The Earth’s outer radiation belt response to geospace disturbances is
extremely variable spanning from a few hours to several months. In
addition, the numerous physical mechanisms, which control this response,
depend on the electron energy, the time-scale and the various types of
geospace disturbances. As a consequence, the various models that
currently exist are either specialized, orbit-specific data-driven
models, or sophisticated physics-based ones. In this paper we present a
new approach for radiation belt modelling using Machine Learning methods
driven solely by solar wind speed and pressure, Solar flux at 10.7 cm
and the $\theta$ angle controlling the
Russell-McPherron effect. We show that the model can successfully
reproduce and predict the electron fluxes of the outer radiation belt in
a broad energy (0.033–4.062 MeV) and L-shell (2.5–5.9) range and,
moreover, it can capture the long-term modulation of the semi-annual
variation. We also show that the model can generalize well and provide
successful predictions, even outside of the spatio-temporal range it has
been trained with, using >0.8 MeV electron flux
measurements from GOES-15/EPEAD at geostationary orbit.