My research focuses on Space Weather!
The ability to predict radiation belt dynamics, and thus space weather, has become increasingly important for the broader society due to an increasing satellite infrastructure that is vulnerable to energetic electrons.
NASA Video on the May 10, 2024 geomagnetic storm!
Publication and Research Updates
Explore my publications further below:
Reconstructing Equatorial Electron Flux Measurements from low-Earth-orbit: A Conjunction Based Framework
D.L. Stumbaugh, J. Bortnik, and S.G. Claudepierre
Published in Space Weather
Summary:
We present a machine learning based model trained on a dataset that uses the global coherent nature of the radiation belts to reconstruct electron flux measurements near the geomagnetic equator.
We establish conjunctions, or times, when the low-Earth-orbit (LEO) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s near-equatorial Van Allen Probes are connected along the same magnetic field line and measuring the same electron population. (show in the picture).
We show that the model performs well and we demonstrate that we can monitor in situ radiation belt fluxes using only relatively smaller and cost-effective satellites with a neural network model instead of the more traditional high-altitude satellites.
Reconstructing Equatorial Electron Flux Measurements From Data collected at Low-Earth-Orbit resolved in Magnetic Local Time
D.L. Stumbaugh and J. Bortnik
Submitted to Space Weather
Summary:
We present a network of five machine learning models that builds on an earlier model to reconstruct, predict equatorial electron flux measurements. Using the mapping process of our first paper, we identify a total of over 76,500 conjunction events between POES and RBSP. Since each POES spacecraft orbits in its own magnetic local time swath, we train five separate machine learning models on roughly 13,500 conjunctions, one for each POES spacecraft. By adding the MLT component, we show the potential for future means to in real-time, monitor the radiation belts from LEO satellites. See in the accompanying figure, our reconstruction of the September 7-8 substorm.
