Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.
Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
Earth is surrounded by rings of energetic particles called radiation belts. The inner belt can sometimes be populated by megaelectron volt (MeV) energetic electrons during particularly strong solar storms. When moved by electromagnetic waves, these energetic particles can rain into the atmosphere.
Feinland and Blum [2025] show that periodic signatures of relativistic electron rain observed by satellites can be used to better predict when and where they might happen in the future. The authors find that these high-energy electrons usually came into the inner belt quickly after solar storms and gradually rained out over the course of a few weeks. During particularly quiet solar conditions, there were no detectable high-energy electrons in this region at all. These results are important to incorporate into models of the radiation belts, to better characterize and predict the high radiation environment in near-Earth space.
Citation: Feinland, M. A., & Blum, L. W. (2025). Lightning-induced precipitation as a proxy for inner belt MeV electron decay times. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 130, e2025JA034258. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JA034258
—Viviane Pierrard, Editor, JGR: Space Physics