Modelling and data-intensive science methods to understand substorm-driven energy deposition into the polar atmosphere

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Space Weather describes environmental conditions in space that can have an impact on Earth, and severe Space Weather is listed as one of the highest priority natural hazards in the UK Government's National Risk Register. Conditions in Earth's magnetosphere are constantly changing over the substorm cycle: a build-up and explosive release of magnetic flux and energy from the interaction between the solar wind and the planetary field. At substorm onset, much of this energy makes its way toward the polar regions, dissipating into the upper atmosphere as changes in Earth's radio emissions (intensifications and frequency changes) and changes in the brightness and morphology of auroral emissions are associated with this varying energy deposition.This project will use i) sophisticated modelling to extract relevant energy parameters from years of data from auroral cameras operated by Southampton's Space Environment Physics group in the high Arctic, ii) develop novel computing methods to automate the process of analysing decades of spacecraft observations of radio emissions, to select the features which characterize energy deposition, iii) simulate the changing visibility of radio and auroral emissions from orbiting spacecraft, to quantify the sensitivity of the datasets to the observation location.