A Story Between Dragon King and Aurora in the World of MAGE

Aurorae, also known as the polar lights, are splendid natural light display in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Aurorae are produced by electrons and ions from the Earth’s magnetosphere and solar wind, which move along the Earth’s magnetic field lines and dive into the topside atmosphere, i.e., the ionosphere-thermosphere. There are various physical mechanisms facilitating the precipitation, e.g., acceleration along geomagnetic field lines, and interactions with plasma waves. The most important consequence of auroral precipitation is the generation of ionospheric conductivity due to ionization of neutral atmosphere by the energetic charged particles. In order to understand the formation process of aurora, we have been developing a physics based precipitation model, named as Dragon King, to characterize different types of auroral precipitation based on their respective underlying physics. The Dragon King model is embedded in the Multiscale Atmosphere-Geospace Environment (MAGE) whole geospace model, which treats the Earth’s magnetosphere, ring current, and ionosphere-thermosphere as coupled system. In this colloquium, I will talk about recent progress in the development of the Dragon King model, and its application in the study of auroral precipitation and geospace storms.