The Earth's Plasmasphere with Contributions from D. L. Carpenter and V. Bassolo
Transcript of The Earth's Plasmasphere with Contributions from D. L. Carpenter and V. Bassolo
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Eos,Vol. 81, No. 34, August 22,2000
Fredericksburg, Virginia, last May She completed degree requirements for a B.S in geology with honors.Lillians research interests include nearshore coastal processes and hazards and their relation to
coastal development. She is currently working
as a hydrographer for Dewberry & Davis, LLC-Fairfax, in the Coastal Engineering section for the Federal Emergency Management Agencys National Flood Insurance Program.
Thao Ton-That presented a poster titled Direct 4 0Ar/ 3 9Ar Dating of Latest Pleistocene
Tephra in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1997, Thao received her dipl me in Geneva on 4 0 Ar/ 3 9 Ar dating basalt flows in Patagonia to constrain the timing of Pleistocene glaciations.She is currently completing her Ph.D. on the chronology of latest Pleistocene
marine deposits at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, under the supervision of Brad Singer (now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison). Thao s research interests include 4 0Ar/ 3 9Ar geochronology espe
cially applied to problems in paleoclimate.
BOOK REVIEWS The Earth s Plasmasphere with Contributions from D. L. Carpenter and V. Bassolo
PAGE 389
J. F. LEMAIRE AND K. I. GRINGAUZ Cambridge University Press, New York,
372 pp., ISBN 0-521-43091-7,1998, $90.
The plasmasphere is a region of enduring scientific interest and considerable practical importance. A number of communications, navigation, and military satellites that are becoming indispensable to routine human activities are stationed in this region.
To ensure the reliability of these assets, it is important to understand the plasmaspheric environment comprehensively Recently, there has been renewed interest in the plasmasphere as evidenced by a number of imaging missions, such as the NASA/Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE), the US. Department of Defense/Advanced Research & Global Observation Satellite (ARGOS),and the proposed Magnetospheric Imager (MI), whose objectives include imaging the plasmasphere. To fully use the information obtained by remote sensing, we must develop more accurate models of the plasmaspheric structure than are currently available. Hence, an emphasis on plasmaspheric research is particularly timely
Unfortunately, during the decades since the International Geophysical Year (IGY), plasmaspheric research has witnessed sporadic interest at best, and there are significant gaps in our knowledge of the plasmasphere. New ideas and new perspectives are necessary to advance our understanding of this vital region of near-Earth space. A major impediment for new entrants to this field has been the lack of a readily available, comprehensive description of the current state of the art in the plasmasphere.
The authors of this volume being reviewed have done a commendable job of alleviating this problem.The book is ideal reading for newcomers to the field, as well as for casual but technical readers seeking general knowledge about the plasmasphere region.
The book is organized into five chapters and starts with an excellent review of the historic milestones of the fields development,the
Cold War compulsions that affected its development, and the classified nature of early discoveries in the former USSR. It describes other historic asides of significance to the field, which make this chapter a particular pleasure to read. For example, few know that one of the pioneers in the field, Don Carpenter, entered the field by chance, because he was unable to get clearance for a federal government position that he was seeking.This was a lucky break for the field,since Carpenter would go on to discover the plasmapause (popularly known as the Carpenters knee),and contribute a number of seminal ideas that have shaped the field over the years and will continue to influence it well into the future.
Also, the remarkable and pioneering discoveries made by the early Soviet satellites are not well known in the west.The authors put forth a good effort to describe the early Soviet experiments. Such anecdotes make the subject matter very interesting and engage the reader.
After the popular-level description of the early developments in the plasmasphere, the authors delve more deeply into the discovery of the plasmasphere.They bring the reader up to speed by describing the early experiments using electromagnetic sounding from ground and various radio techniques from satellites.They discuss the most salient parts of these experiments by filtering out the cumbersome details. However, they include an excellent bibliography to provide the reader with more detailed information. The overview of the plasmasphere morphology as determined from sounding experiments allows the reader to become well aware of the major plasmaspheric features and their geophysical importance.This knowledge is further reinforced by in-situ measurements from spacecraft. Unique contributions of in-situ measurements such as low energy ion composition, pitch angle distribution,and temperature, etc., that cannot be accessed via electromagnetic sounding, are emphasized.
The final two chapters of the book are devoted to making connections between various observations and developing global mod
els to tie them coherently into a unified representation.The authors discuss the combination of different observations to develop a global view of important, observable quantities. This includes density and temperature structures, pitch angle distributions, ion composition, the shape of the plasmapause, and density irregularities. It also discusses empirical laws for plasma density distribution and electric and magnetic fields that could be deduced from observations.
I found the concluding remarks section in this chapter to be very important. It summarizes the gaps in our knowledge and suggests areas in which new experiments will be most useful. It highlights the importance of Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) imaging, along with radio sounding for obtaining global snapshots of the plasmasphere.The authors remark, The sheer size of the plasmasphere system, the elusiveness of the plasmapause formation, and the dynamic and complex nature of the system s behavior suggest the need for imaging and radio sounding on a global basis.
The objectives of the imaging experiments mentioned in the opening paragraph of this review are precisely to address this need.
After the exhaustive description of observations in the plasmasphere and an overall phe-nomenological description of the global characteristics, the reader is exposed to rigorous theoretical developments in the final chapter. A good discussion of various theoretical attempts since early 1960 is provided. Both fluid and kinetic descriptions are elucidated and their theoretical underpinnings are highlighted. The models are then applied to explain observations. Theories for density and temperature morphology, plasmapause formation, and large-scale plasma irregularities are extensively treated.
This book comes on the eve of major new imaging experiments, arguably a crucial point in the development and maturity of plasmaspheric research. It is expected that with the launch of the IMAGE satellite, new global imaging techniques will reveal deeper intrigues of the plasmaspheric dynamics that have so far eluded us. In this exciting period of plasmaspheric research, this book is very timely and will help motivate and prepare newcomers to tackle the emerging challenges in the field. I am glad to have this book in my collection.
Reviewer
Gurudas Ganguli Plasma Physics Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C., USA