Data Assimilation into Global MHD Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Models: A New Challenge for Space Physics

Recently, there has been significant progress in data assimilation technology into global ionosphere models. However, global magnetosphere models represent a new challenge since the in-situ magnetospheric data stream is spatially and temporally very sparse. This fact represents new mathematical challenges for data assimilation techniques. This talk briefly outlines the physics and mathematics of previous data-rich inversion techniques, and discusses the mathematical challenges and potential avenues for progress in the data-limited regime of data assimilation techniques.