The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $294,241 Project Grant under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) to The Regents of the University of Colorado, doing business as the University of Colorado. The grant, titled "COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: GEM--DETERMINING THE GLOBAL IMPACT OF NONLINEAR WAVE-PARTICLE INTERACTIONS IN THE RADIATION BELTS," aims to study the effects of large-amplitude waves on the Earth's radiation belts using theory, modeling, and data analysis. The research...
This $292,793 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) will support research to improve modeling and prediction of radiation belt electron dynamics driven by lightning-generated whistler waves. The primary objective is to develop stochastic parameterization methods to better capture the variability in the wave-particle interactions that govern radiation belt electron precipitation into the Earth's atmosphere. This research will help...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $515,885 Project Grant under the Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) to The Regents of the University of Colorado, doing business as the University of Colorado's Office of Contracts and Grants Division. The grant will support a 3-year research project to investigate the inward transport and energy-dependent penetration of energetic electrons (10s of keV to multi-MeV) from the Earth's outer radiation belt into the inner radiation belt. The research...
This $590,898 National Science Foundation award under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) will fund research into modeling chorus wave generation using particle-in-cell simulations. Led by New Mexico Consortium, the project aims to study chorus waves—commonly observed plasma waves in Earth's inner magnetosphere—through large-scale first-principles simulations. The simulations will use realistic magnetic field topology and plasma parameters from observations to test existing theories of...
The Regents of the University of Colorado received a $432,033 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences under the Geosciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.050). The grant will fund research from June 1, 2023 through May 31, 2026 to quantify the contribution of off-equatorial ultra-low frequency waves on radial diffusion in Earth's radiation belts. Specifically, the University will use satellite data from THEMIS, Van Allen Probes,...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences awarded a $682,313 Project Grant to the Space Science Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Boulder, Colorado. The grant, funded through the NSF Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), will support research to determine whether the solar wind electron strahl acts as a seed population for the Earth's electron radiation belt, and to identify the controlling factors for this process. The project aims to...
This three-year, $969,646 National Science Foundation Project Grant in the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) supports research at the University of Texas at Dallas to study nonlinear interactions between energetic electrons and oblique whistler-mode chorus waves in Earth's outer radiation belt. The investigators will develop numerical models of oblique chorus wave packets and electron phase space density evolution. They will quantitatively compare model results with in-situ measurements from...
This three-year, $223,760 National Science Foundation project grant funds research at the University of California, Los Angeles to study energetic electron interactions with oblique whistler-mode chorus waves. Under the NSF's Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), which supports basic research to enhance understanding of the integrated Earth system, this award will quantitatively analyze wave-particle dynamics using numerical models. Researchers will compare simulations of oblique chorus wave...
This National Science Foundation Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) Project Grant award, with $182,965 in total funding, supports a 5-year study on the evolution of magnetospheric plasma waves in response to solar driving. The research team at the University of Colorado will use multi-mission wave data from the Heliophysics System Observatory to characterize the properties and dynamics of various wave modes in the Earth's magnetosphere. Key objectives include understanding how these waves...
This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $250,059 supports research at the University of California, Los Angeles from April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2024. The research aims to advance understanding and prediction of the Van Allen radiation belts through a novel combination of machine learning and data assimilation methods. Specifically, the Principal Investigator will use the Versatile Electron Radiation Belt model and data assimilation to discover generalized Fokker-Planck equations...