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Published February 2004 | Published
Journal Article Open

Response of the Inner Radiation Belt to the Violent Sun-Earth Connection Events of October-November 2003

Looper, M. D.
Blake, J. B.
Mewaldt, R. A. ORCID icon

Abstract

We report observations of the response of the low-altitude radiation population below L = 3 during and after the strong solar energetic particle events and geomagnetic disturbances of late October and early November 2003, and we place this response in the context of observations throughout the 12-year SAMPEX mission. We find that on 29 October 2003, at the approximately 600 km altitude of SAMPEX, the usual belt of energetic protons (above 19 MeV) around L = 2 almost completely disappeared, recovering only after several months. We also observed the appearance of a new belt of ultrarelativistic (above 10 MeV) electrons centered around L = 2. In the previous twelve years, we have never observed such a large decrease of the energetic protons at low altitude. An injection of very high energy electrons like this has not been seen since February 1994.

Additional Information

© 2005 American Geophysical Union. Received 14 September 2004; revised 21 October 2004; accepted 1 November 2004; published 11 January 2005. This work was supported by contract Z667103 between the University of Maryland and The Aerospace Corporation and by contract Z667101 between the University of Maryland and Caltech. We would like to acknowledge the contributions of the PET team, who developed and built the instrument, and of the personnel at Goddard Space Flight Center who constructed, launched, and operated the SAMPEX spacecraft.

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