T. I. Pulkkinen (1), M. Palmroth (1) and
N. Yu. Ganushkina (1)
(1) Finnish Meteorological Institute, POBox 503, FIN-00101
Helsinki,Finland.
tuija.pulkkinen@fmi.fi/Fax: 358-99294603
The four Cluster II spacecraft orbit around the Earth such
that in early 2001
the orbit cuts through the dayside magnetosphere near the
polar cusp, and
traverses the nightside auroral fieldlines between the
plasma sheet and the
ionosphere. Observations made around the orbit will be used
to examine on
one hand the porcesses related to solar wind -
magnetosphere coupling in the
dayside bow shock, magnetosheath, magnetopause, and the
polar cusps, and
on the other hand the processes related to nightside
auroral region, especially
those associated with magnetospheric substorms and storms.
In this talk we
combine several large-scale modeling methods to give the
mesoscale Cluster
observations a large-scale context: The dayside processes
are examined with
the help of a global MHD simulation, which uses solar wind
input to compute
the dynamic evolution of the magnetosphere. On the other
hand, the nightside
auroral processes are examined utilizing an empirical
magnetic field model,
which can be tuned to best represent the tail field
configuration during indi-vidual
events. Furthermore, applications of such empirical
modeling techniques
to include also inner magnetosphere ring current variations
during geomagnetic
storms are discussed.