Publications by authors named "M Shumko"

Article Synopsis
  • The Earth's radiation belts are affected by different factors that can make the number of energetic electrons change a lot.
  • One important factor is called microbursts, which are quick blasts of energetic electrons that come from space and enter our atmosphere.
  • Interesting new observations show that lightning can cause these microbursts, connecting storms on Earth with space events.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Microbursts are impulsive (<1 s) injections of electrons into the atmosphere, thought to be caused by nonlinear scattering by chorus waves. Although attempts have been made to quantify their contribution to outer belt electron loss, the uncertainty in the overall size and duration of the microburst region is typically large, so that their contribution to outer belt loss is uncertain. We combine datasets that measure chorus waves (Van Allen Probes [RBSP], Arase, ground-based VLF stations) and microburst (>30 keV) precipitation (FIREBIRD II and AC6 CubeSats, POES) to determine the size of the microburst-producing chorus source region beginning on 5 December 2017.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Curtain precipitation is a recently discovered stationary, persistent, and latitudinally narrow electron precipitation phenomenon in low Earth orbit. Curtains are observed over consecutive passes of the dual AeroCube-6 CubeSats while their in-track lag varied from a fraction of a second to 65 s, with dosimeters that are sensitive to >35-keV electrons. This study uses the AeroCube-6 mission to quantify the statistical properties of 1,634 curtains observed over 3 years.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Microbursts are an impulsive increase of electrons from the radiation belts into the atmosphere and have been directly observed in low Earth orbit and the upper atmosphere. Prior work has estimated that microbursts are capable of rapidly depleting the radiation belt electrons on the order of a day; hence, their role to radiation belt electron losses must be considered. Losses due to microbursts are not well constrained, and more work is necessary to accurately quantify their contribution as a loss process.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

FIREBIRD-II is a National Science Foundation funded CubeSat mission designed to study the scale size and energy spectrum of relativistic electron microbursts. The mission consists of two identical 1.5 U CubeSats in a low earth polar orbit, each with two solid state detectors that differ only in the size of their geometric factors and fields of view.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF