Relativistic Radiation Belt Electron Responses to GEM Magnetic Storms: Comparison of CRRES Observations with 3-D VERB Simulations

Understanding the dynamics of relativistic electron acceleration, loss, and transport in the Earth's radiation belt during magnetic storms is a challenging task. The U.S. National Science Foundation's Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) has identified five magnetic storms for in-depth study that occurred during the second half of the Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite (CRRES) mission in the year 1991. In this study, we show the responses of relativistic radiation belt electrons to the magnetic storms by comparing the time-dependent 3-D Versatile Electron Radiation Belt (VERB) simulations with the CRRES MEA 1 MeV electron observations in order to investigate the relative roles of the competing effects of previously proposed scattering mechanisms at different storm phases, as well as to examine the extent to which the simulations can reproduce observations. The major scattering processes in our model are radial transport due to Ultra Low Frequency (ULF) electromagnetic fluctuations, pitch-angle and energy diffusion including mixed diffusion by whistler mode chorus waves outside the plasmasphere, and pitch-angle scattering by plasmaspheric hiss inside the plasmasphere. We provide a detailed description of simulations for each of the GEM storm events.