Satellite Communications White Papers
Effects of Geomagnetic Storms on the Ionosphere and Atmosphere
Overview
Geomagnetic storms are probably the most important phenomenon among those related to solar wind and high-energy particles. They produce large and global disturbances in the ionosphere, but they affect also the neutral atmosphere, including the middle atmosphere and troposphere [e.g., Lastovicka, 1996].
The geomagnetic storm is a complex process of solar wind/magnetospheric origin. Various features of this complex process act at various altitudes in the ionosphere and neutral atmosphere. This paper presents an experiment construct a "vertical profile" and related scenarios of the geomagnetic storm effects on the Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere starting from the F2 -layer maximum down to the troposphere. It is in no case a full review of scientific results in this field. The paper concentrates predominantly (even though not only) on the northern hemisphere middle latitudes and on the results of East European authors, which are often less familiar to the scientific community.
The effects of geomagnetic storms at different altitudes and latitudes differ in development in time and in intensity. They reflect different features of geomagnetic storms, therefore their mechanisms are different. This makes construction of the vertical profile of effects and responsible mechanisms difficult.
The geomagnetic storm should be called magnetospheric storm, because the observed changes of geomagnetic field are essentially a consequence of strong and rapid magnetospheric processes and changes under solar wind action. The name "geomagnetic storm" is traditional, because storms had been observed first as changes of geomagnetic activity/field, and they have been monitored until now by geomagnetic activity measurements.
A geomagnetic storm is a complex process: its various features act at different heights. In the F2 layer the midlatitude effect is basically an ionospheric response to storm-induced changes in the neutral atmosphere, which are prima
| Publisher | American Geophysical Union (AGU) | File Format | HTML |
|---|---|---|---|
| Date Published | January 2001 | Downloads | 402 |
| Format | White Papers | ||
| Topics | |||
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