The simulations are run with the Space Weather Integrated Forecasting Framework (SWIFF) Plasmasphere Model (SPM) developed at the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB). It predicts the density and the temperature of the electrons, protons and helium ions inside the plasmasphere as well as outside, i.e. in the plasmatrough (Pierrard and Stegen, 2008). It is a 3D kinetic model of the plasmasphere coupled to the empirical International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) model (Bilitza, 2018) as boundary condition (Pierrard and Voiculescu, 2011). In the version used here, some improvements have been made and are detailed in Pierrard et al. (2021) and Botek et al. (2021, in review). The plots represent the electron density as a function of MLT and L and for 4 different magnetic latitudes. The plasmapause position determined by the model and using the mechanism of interchange instability (Lemaire and Pierrard, 2008) is plotted in the top panel.
When the solar wind forecast from IRAP/CNRS, Toulouse (WP2) becomes available, 21 independent ensembles will be generated for a five-day time interval in a one-hour cadence. In the meantime, a NOAA three-day forecast with a single ensemble is used to drive the BIRA-IASB density model.