Coupling the Rice Convection Model‐Equilibrium to the Lyon‐Fedder‐Mobarry Global Magnetohydrodynamic Model

The pursuit of realistic simulation of the physics of plasma transport, ring current formation and storm‐triggered Earth magnetic and electric field is an ongoing challenge in magnetospheric physics. To this end, we have implemented a coupling of the Lyon‐Fedder‐Mobarry (LFM) global magnetohydrodynamic model with the Rice convection model‐equilibrium (RCM‐E) of the inner‐magnetosphere and plasma sheet. This one‐way coupling scheme allows continuous update of the RCM‐E boundary conditions from the plasma moments calculated by the LFM while preserving entropy conservation. This results in a model that has the high‐resolution self‐consistent description of the inner magnetosphere and includes the effects of time‐dependent outer‐magnetospheric electromagnetic fields and plasma configurations. In addition, driving the RCM‐E in this way resolves the issue of having a plasma‐β‐constrained region in the coupled model of LFM‐RCM and expands the RCM‐E simulation region farther out into plasma sheet where the storm‐time plasma transportation takes place. In the ionosphere, the RCM‐E replaces the ionospheric electric field model of LFM with the one used by the RCM. The electric potential produced, along with the realistic ionospheric precipitation patterns shows strong consistency with the transportation patterns in the plasma sheet featured with well‐resolved bubbles and bursty bulk flows. Results from the simulations of an idealized event will be presented and discussed. Understanding the important phenomena in the inner magnetosphere such as plasma transport, ring current formation, storm‐triggered Earth electromagnetic field changes and related ionospheric signatures is of great importance to space weather research. We implement a new coupling scheme of two models: the Lyon‐Fedder‐Mobarry (LFM) global magnetohydrodynamic model that simulates the global evolution of the magnetosphere and the Rice convection model‐equilibrium (RCM‐E) which self‐consistently describes the dynamics in the inner magnetosphere. Compared with the coupled model of LFM‐RCM, this new coupling scheme expands the RCM simulation region significantly farther out into plasma sheet, so the trajectory and evolution of the plasma flows can be tracked. In addition, the built‐in potential solver of RCM‐E allows us to more accurately connect the plasma distribution to the ionospheric potential by the Birkeland currents. The resulting electric potential better resolves the ionospheric features that correspond to the flow patterns in the plasma sheet than that in LFM‐RCM. The simulated precipitation patterns on the polar cap resemble the aurora observations during the injection events. Self‐consistent inner‐magnetosphere model is driven by inputs from the Lyon‐Fedder‐Mobarry global magnetohydrodynamic modelThe expanded inner magnetospheric modeling region captures high‐resolution bursty bulk flows in the plasma sheetRealistic bursty bulk flows induced aurora patterns are simulated Self‐consistent inner‐magnetosphere model is driven by inputs from the Lyon‐Fedder‐Mobarry global magnetohydrodynamic model The expanded inner magnetospheric modeling region captures high‐resolution bursty bulk flows in the plasma sheet Realistic bursty bulk flows induced aurora patterns are simulated