Authors: Anthony Rasca (CIRES/NOAA)

On 8 March 2012 a large geomagnetic storm was triggered by a passing CME associated with a X-class solar flare days earlier. The CME’s Sun-to-Earth propagation and the resulting storm is a well-studied event via magnetohydrodynamic modeling and spacecraft measurement analysis. This event holds extra significance by also coinciding with a lunar traverse of the Earth’s magnetotail, creating unique plasma conditions at the lunar environment driven by sudden changes of the magnetotail. A previous study investigated the lunar wake response and surrounding plasma conditions during the combination of these events using the OpenGGCM global magnetospheric MHD model and THEMIS ARTEMIS spacecraft observations un lunar orbit to drive smaller-scale hybrid-PIC simulations of the lunar wake. Here, we present results that instead using the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) Geospace model–a global magnetosphere MHD code running operationally at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center–to model this event and predict magnetotail conditions at the Moon. Magnetotail conditions are compared to results using the OpenGGCM model and to THEMIS-ARTEMIS magnetic field and plasma measurements near lunar orbit.