The project scientists for the IMAGE, Cluster, Polar and Wind spacecraft have organized an open, collaborative workshop to examine the basic natural processes surrounding magnetic reconnection and understand its manifestations at the dayside magnetosphere and cusp boundaries. The objective is to bring the spacecraft observing teams together with the broader SEC modeling, observing and theory communities in order to bring focus to the current state of science understanding on the subject and to stimulate further collaborative work.

The meeting will be organized as a series of topical sessions focusing upon critical unsolved questions.

Topology of Dayside Reconnection: Which of the important dayside reconnection processes dominate and under what conditions? How patchy in space and time? How dependent on external turbulence? What governs the high altitude boundary of the cusp? How are double cusps created?

The impact of high latitude reconnection: What are the conditions under which high latitude reconnection occurs and what are its consequences on the dayside particle population? What are differences observed with Bz north and south, and between the Summer and Winter hemispheres?

Contributions from exhaust plumes and the plasmasphere: How do storms and substorms release cold and hot plasmas in to the magnetosheath, and what are their low altitude consequences? What fraction of the released plasma gets recirculated in to the magnetosphere? What fraction of eroded plasma from the plasmasphere becomes part of the drainage plumes?

Ionospheric Control of dayside reconnection: To what extent does MI-coupling affect magnetic merging on the dayside? How filamentary are the field-aligned current associated with dayside reconnection?

Understanding the Low-latitude boundary layer: What are the causes of the temporal and spatial structures? Under what circumstances do waves appear on the magnetopause?

The time will be divided approximately equally between presentations and discussion. An evening poster session touching on all five topics will further extend the opportunity for collaborative discussions. Participation is open to everyone who can make a pertinent contribution to the topic. The spacecraft observing teams extend a special invitation to those from the ground-based observatory and theoretical science and modeling communities.

Those wishing to participate and contribute presentations are asked to provide a preliminary expression of interest and presentation title to the program committee at yosemite@lepvax.gsfc.nasa.gov by December 2, 2002. A conference web site with further information on the program, reservation and travel logistics will be announced.

Abstracts will be requested as the program is finalized. Electronic copies of the presentations, both oral and poster, will be posted to conference web site after the workshop.

Program Committee:

• Chair: Patricia Reiff, Rice University
• Donald Carpenter, Stanford University
• Cindy Cattell, University of Minnesota
• Philippe Escoubet, ESA/ESTEC Space Science Dept.
• John Foster, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Manuel Grande, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
• Lynn Kistler, University of New Hampshire
• Tai Phan, University of California at Berkeley
• Bill Sandel, University of Arizona
• Jack Scudder, University of Iowa
• Michelle Thomsen, Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Karlheinz Trattner, Lockheed Martin

For further information, please contact the Wind, Cluster, Polar, and IMAGE Project Scientists at yosemite@lepvax.gsfc.nasa.gov, or contact the meeting logistics coordinator at cfarmer@swri.edu.

Return to IMAGE upcoming meetings page

Return to IMAGE home page