Solar Storms Can Drain Electrical Charge Above Earth

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Solar Storms Can Drain Electrical Charge Above Earth
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
April 10, 2017

New research on solar storms finds that they not only can cause regions
of excessive electrical charge in the upper atmosphere above Earth's poles,
they also can do the exact opposite: cause regions that are nearly depleted
of electrically charged particles. The finding adds to our knowledge of
how solar storms affect Earth and could possibly lead to improved radio
communication and navigation systems for the Arctic.

A team of researchers from Denmark, the United States and Canada made
the discovery while studying a solar storm that reached Earth on Feb.
19, 2014. The storm was observed to affect the ionosphere in all of Earth's
northern latitudes. Its effects on Greenland were documented by a network
of global navigation satellite system, or GNSS, stations as well as geomagnetic
observatories and other resources. Attila Komjathy of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, California, developed software to process the GNSS
data and helped with the data processing. The results were published in
the journal Radio Science.

Solar storms often include an eruption on the sun called a coronal mass
ejection, or CME. This is a vast cloud of electrically charged particles
hurled into space that disturbs the interplanetary magnetic field in our
solar system. When these particles and the magnetic disturbances encounter
Earth's magnetic field, they interact in a series of complex physical
processes, and trigger perturbations in the Earth's magnetic field. Those
perturbations are called geomagnetic storms. The interactions may cause
unstable patches of excess electrons in the ionosphere, an atmospheric
region starting about 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth's surface that
already contains ions and electrons.

The 2014 geomagnetic storm was a result of two powerful Earth-directed
CMEs. The storm initially produced patches of extra electrons in the ionosphere
over northern Greenland, as usual. But just south of these patches, the
scientists were surprised to find broad areas extending 300 to 600 miles
(500 to 1,000 kilometers) where the electrons were "almost vacuumed out,"
in the words of Per Hoeg of the National Space Research Institute at the
Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby. These areas remained depleted
of electrons for several days.

The electrons in the ionosphere normally reflect radio waves back to ground
level, enabling long-distance radio communications. Both electron depletion
and electron increases in this layer can possibly cause radio communications
to fail, reduce the accuracy of GPS systems, damage satellites and harm
electrical grids.

"We don't know exactly what causes the depletion," Komjathy said. "One
possible explanation is that electrons are recombining with positively
charged ions until there are no excess electrons. There could also be
redistribution -- electrons being displaced and pushed away from the region,
not only horizontally but vertically."

The paper is titled "Multiinstrument observations of a geomagnetic storm
and its effects on the Arctic ionosphere: A case study of the 19 February
2014 storm." Lead author Tibor Durgonics is a doctoral student at the
Technical University of Denmark. Richard Langley (University of New Brunswick,
Canada) provided data sets and interpretation.

JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California.

News Media Contact
Alan Buis
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
818-354-0474
Alan...@jpl.nasa.gov

Written by Carol Rasmussen
NASA's Earth Science News Team

2017-103