Earth’s Van Allen belts are studied by solving particular kinds of equations that could be notoriously difficult when different physical processes are acting together. In this article, we describe a numerical code that can solve these equations with unprecedented freedom from the numerous restrictions of existing models, even the ones that no other can solve. The abilities of our code could mean a breakthrough in Van Allen belt studies from the diffusive into the non-diffusive transport regime.

This paper describes a numerical treatment (ring average) to relax the time step in finite-difference schemes when using spherical and cylindrical coordinates with axis singularities. The ring average is used to develop a high-resolution thermosphere–ionosphere coupled community model. The technique is a significant improvement in space weather modeling capability, and it can also be adapted to more general finite-difference solvers for hyperbolic equations in spherical and polar geometries.

This paper presents the first known application of multi-model ensembles to the forecasting of the thermosphere. A multi-model ensemble (MME) is a method for combining different, independent models. The main advantage of using an MME is to reduce the effect of model errors and bias, since it is expected that the model errors will, at least partly, cancel. This paper shows that use of MMEs for forecasting thermospheric densities can reduce errors by 60 %.

An experimental study was conducted to quantify the anthropic energy flux of traffic impact on RST in the winter season. It indicated an RST increase by 1 °C to 3 °C with respect to the absence of traffic. Additional work was undertaken so as to evaluate to which extent an accurate description of traffic might improve the TEB numerical model when dedicated to RST simulations. Two approaches to traffic integration in this model were detailed and tested.

The 2nd & 3rd adiabatic invariants (in particular their proxies I & L*) are commonly used to characterize charged particle motion in a magnetic field. However care should be taken when calculating them, as the assumption of their conservation is not valid everywhere in the Earth’s magnetosphere. In this paper we compare calculations of I and L* using LANLstar, SPENVIS, IRBEM and a 3D particle tracer, and we map the areas in the Earth’s magnetosphere where I & L* can be assumed to be conserved.