Variability of Earth's Magnetopause and Bow Shock Locations Modeled via Multi‐Decade Solar Wind Observations

Abstract

Abstract Numerous studies have explored modeling the shape of Earth's magnetopause (MP) and bow shock (BS) as a function of incident solar wind conditions, utilizing either magnetohydrodynamic model data or observations of boundary crossings from orbiting spacecraft. Here we present a novel method for modeling the variance of the location of the BS and MP location as a function of solar wind variability. We utilize 27 years of OMNI solar wind data to drive a Monte Carlo simulation in which 1,000 solar wind conditions are randomly drawn and the MP and BS locations are simulated. Leveraging ray tracing, we have aggregated the Lin et al. (2010, https://doi.org/10.1029/2009ja014235) and Nguyen et al. (2022c, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021ja030112) models of the MP and Jeřáb et al. (2005, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2004.09.032) and Chapman and Cairns (2003, https://doi.org/10.1029/2002ja009569) models of the BS to produce 3D models for the 75%, 90%, 95%, and 99% quantiles of both surfaces, along with average and median locations.

Keywords

• magnetosphere
• bow shock
• solar wind
• magnetospheric physics
• heliophysics