Monday

Twenty-first century life is highly dependent on satellite services, which are at risk from the hazardous radiation belt environment. Ultra-low frequency waves (ULF, 1-20 mHz) driven by the solar wind are responsible for the radial transport and energisation of electrons in Earth's radiation belt, and are therefore essential components of radiation belt modelling. Current models of ULF waves and the resulting radial diffusion are deterministic, producing a single output for each set of input parameters. Meanwhile, weather and climate models increasingly use stochastic parameterisations to account for the effects of sub-scale processes and model uncertainty. To apply stochastic parameterisation to radial diffusion, we require probabilistic forecasts of the power in ULF waves in order to estimate diffusion coefficients.

Our solar wind driven, probabilistic wave map can be used to address the inherent variability in ULF waves and their effects on radiation belt electrons. We compare radial diffusion coefficients from our model and existing parameterisations. By using these probability distributions, we can also investigate the physics underlying ULF wave generation in a novel manner.