An Overview
Major: Physics and Geology
Academic Affiliation: The City College of New York
Biography
At an early age Theresa’s mother introduced her to the natural world and to the science that explained how all of the intricate systems worked together. This experience gave her the opportunity to explore the many fields of science and has enabled her to find her passion for both geoscience and physics. She is currently attending The City College of New York, studying physics and geology. The RESESS internship has helped her discover a passion for the field of space weather and she hopes to pursue this area for graduate studies. Besides going to school, she enjoys rock climbing, hiking, camping, and crossing Iowa on bike. In her down time she likes to play the drums, go star gazing, and listen to talk radio from science to politics.
Abstracts
2010- Analysis of three real-time geomagnetic storm indices
The Dst, or geomagnetic storm index, was first created by the Kyoto World Data Center and is commonly used to specify geomagnetic disturbance periods and characterize the resulting ring current enhancements from ground-based horizontal magnetic field intensity measurements. Real-time versions of the Dst index are produced for operational purposes, and are of interest to many users, including the US military, airline industry, and power companies. USGS Real time Dst, Kyoto Quicklook Dst, and Space Environment Corporation RDst use preliminary data and use a variety of contributing observatories and methods. Both USGS and RDst use a combination time and frequency domain method and Kyoto uses a time domain method in creating the Dst index. We perform an analysis of these three real-time Dst indices for the time period of October 1, 2009 to May 31, 2010. The USGS 3, using three observatories instead of the standard four, and the Kyoto Sym-H index are introduced in the analysis for comparison of observatory location with the three main Dst indices. We present a statistical study of the differences due to algorithm, output time resolution, and location of contributing observatories. Increased time resolution shows higher frequency fluctuations during disturbances and more defined storm features. There was no measurable difference in mid- to low-latitude observatories during quiet-to-moderate storm time periods. The average impact on the index due to the different algorithms used was approximately 9 nT during active time periods.
2011- An introduction to inner magnetosphere plasma composition changes during Solar Cycle 23
Over the course of one solar cycle, fluctuations in the amount of solar energy, in the form of charged particles, can cause dramatic changes in the plasmasphere’s mass density. Understanding the dynamics of plasmaspheric mass density is important for understanding energy flow through the magnetosphere that in turn is impor- tant for satellite communications on Earth. Solar cycle 23 began on May 1996 and ended on December 2008. It had an unusually long solar minimum and low maximum compared to the last four solar cycles. This particular solar cycle has been the topic of discussion within the solar and space physics community. Our goal is to constrain the changes in plasmaspheric mass density between a solar minimum and maximum in order to observe how the plasmasphere density changes during this unusual solar cycle. We attempted to use an automated method created by Berube et al. [2003] that combines the cross phase and power ratio method to determine resonant frequencies from magnetic field lines which are then used to calculate plasma mass density. We obtained our data from paired magnetometers from MEASURE array at L =1.74 and L =1.99 with a time resolution of one second. The time period of analysis for solar maximum 23 is the month of September in 2000 during the solar minimum and the month of February in 2005 during the solar maximum. We discovered that most of the syntax and methods in the original program have been deprecated. This project will next focus on the modification and update of the automated method, which will eventually enable further plasmaspheric research.