Visit of Nicholas Larsen at GFZ
On Wednesday, 8.07, Nicholas Larsen, formerly employed at the University of Oulu, our GERACLE partner, visited the GFZ group. Nick gave a talk entitled ‘The OTSO Geomagnetospheric Propagation Tool: Applications to Historical Storms and Geomagnetic Epochs’. The presentation was followed by meetings in smaller groups, especially with Monika Korte, the GERACLE PI and Pablo Rivera, who is responsible for the modelling part in GERACLE at GFZ. The discussions included different aspects of OTSO and of geomagnetic field models, and we explored ideas for further collaborations complementing the GERACLE aims.
The OTSO tool was designed to compute the trajectory of cosmic rays (CRs) within the Earth’s magnetic field under various magnetospheric conditions. The Earth is constantly exposed to cosmic rays, which can be hazardous to humans and technological systems. Their effects include increased radiation exposure for aviation crew and passengers, as well as damage to spacecrafts. The Earth's magnetic field deflects most incoming CRs, substantially reducing these effects. Accurate modeling of CR transport through the geomagnetic field is therefore essential for studying cosmic ray-related phenomena.
In GERACLE, OTSO will be used to model the transport of the energetic particles of different origins and energies in the magnetosphere and atmosphere. Magnetospheric transport will be modeled directly using the particles’ trajectory tracing with OTSO.
To learn more about OTSO, please refer to the Larsen at at. (2023) publication.
