Model Simulation Setup
The MAGE model [Pham et al., 2022; Lin et al., 2021] consists of the
Grid Agnostic MHD with Extended Research Applications (GAMERA) model of
the magnetosphere [Zhang et al. 2019], the Rice Convection Model
(RCM) of the ring current [Toffoletto et al. 2003], the
Thermospheric Ionosphere Electrodynamics General Circulation Model
(TIEGCM) of the ionosphere-thermosphere [Richmond et al., 1992], and
the RE-developed Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupler/Solver (REMIX)
[Merkin and Lyon, 2010] that links different components of MAGE. As
aforementioned, the standalone TIEGCM is traditionally driven by
empirical high latitude ion convection models [e.g., Heelis et al.
1982; Weimer 2005] which simply use the three-hourly Kp index or
selected solar wind parameters as inputs. These empirical models do not
capture fast temporal variations of high latitude convection to address
questions of the dynamic changes of global ionospheric electric fields,
such as the penetrating electric field which can induce nearly
instantaneous responses in the ionospheric thermospheric system in the
equatorial region. In this study the magnetospheric model of GAMERA
provides the dynamic features of electric potential at high latitudes
for the TIEGCM at a cadence of every 10 s. Moreover, the MAGE model can
resolve mesoscale convection structures such as subauroral polarization
streams (SAPS) that are absent in the empirical models [Lin et al.,
2021]. In addition, the MAGE also incorporates the RCM to simulate the
ring current effect that can have implication for the penetrating
electric field. It is also noted that the ring current may provide the
shielding effect to the penetrating electric field. The model setup is
shown in Figure 1 of Lin et al., [2021]. In this study, the MAGE
model was driven by solar wind and IMF data obtained from the CDAWeb
OMNI database with one-minute resolution. The simulated interval starts
from 19 September 2020. Specifically, we focus on the TIEGCM outputs for
the ionosphere-thermosphere, which have a spatial resolution of 1.25
degree latitudinally and longitudinally and 0.25 scale height
vertically. The vertical direction consists of 57 grids spanning from
the altitude of ~97 km to ~600 km. The
time step is 5 seconds. We save the results every 5 minutes.