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Predicting Magnetopause Crossings At Geosynchronous Orbit During The Halloween Storms, R. E. Lopez, S. Hernandez, M. Wiltberger, Chia-Lin L. Huang, E. L. Kepko, Harlan E. Spence, C. C. Goodrich, J. G. Lyon

Physics & Astronomy

[1] In late October and early November of 2003, the Sun unleashed a powerful series of events known as the Halloween storms. The coronal mass ejections launched by the Sun produced several severe compressions of the magnetosphere that moved the magnetopause inside of geosynchronous orbit. Such events are of interest to satellite operators, and the ability to predict magnetopause crossings along a given orbit is an important space weather capability. In this paper we compare geosynchronous observations of magnetopause crossings during the Halloween storms to crossings determined from the Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry global magnetohydrodynamic simulation of the magnetosphere as well to predictions …