Because of the small number of spacecraft available in the Earth’s magnetosphere at any given time, it is not possible to obtain direct measurements of the fundamental quantities, such as the magnetic field and plasma density, with a spatial coverage necessary for studying, global magnetospheric phenomena. In such cases, empirical as well as physics-based models are proven to be extremely valuable. This requires not only having high fidelity and high accuracy models, but also knowing the weakness and strength of such models. In this study, we assess the accuracy of the widely used Tsyganenko magnetic field models, T96, T01, and T04, by comparing the calculated magnetic field with the ones measured in-situ by the GOES satellites during geomagnetically disturbed times. We first set the baseline accuracy of the models from a data-model comparison during the intervals of geomagnetically quiet times. During quiet times, we find that all three models exhibit a systematic error of about 10% in the magnetic field magnitude, while the error in the field vector direction is on average less than 1%. We then assess the model accuracy by a data-model comparison during twelve geomagnetic storm events. We find that the errors in both the magnitude and the direction are well maintained at the quiet-time level throughout the storm phase, except during the main phase of the storms in which the largest error can reach 15% on average, and exceed well over 70% in the worst case. Interestingly, the largest error occurs not at the Dst minimum but 2–3 hours before the minimum. Finally, the T96 model has consistently underperformed compared to the other models, likely due to the lack of computation for the effects of ring current. However, the T96 and T01 models are accurate enough for most of the time except for highly disturbed periods.

Equatorial noise, also known magnetosonic waves (MSWs), are one of the frequently observed plasma waves in Earth’s inner magnetosphere. Observations have shown that wave amplitudes maximize at the magnetic equator with a narrow extent in their latitudinal distribution. It has been understood that waves are generated from an equatorial source region and confined within a few degrees magnetic latitude. The present study investigates whether the MSW instability and saturation amplitudes maximize at the equator, given an energetic proton ring-like distribution derived from an observed wave event, and using linear instability analysis and particle-in-cell simulations with the plasma conditions at different latitudes along the dipole magnetic field line. The results show that waves initially grow fastest (i.e., with the largest growth rate) at high latitude (20°–25°), but consistent with observations, their saturation amplitudes maximize within ±10° latitude. On the other hand, the slope of the saturation amplitudes versus latitude revealed in the present study is not as steep as what the previous statistical observation results suggest. This may be indicative of some other factors not considered in the present analyses at play, such as background magnetic field and plasma inhomogeneities and the propagation effect.