scholarly journals Review of Long-Term Trends in the Equatorial Ionosphere Due the Geomagnetic Field Secular Variations and Its Relevance to Space Weather

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Ana G. Elias ◽  
Blas F. de Haro Barbas ◽  
Bruno S. Zossi ◽  
Franco D. Medina ◽  
Mariano Fagre ◽  
...  

The Earth’s ionosphere presents long-term trends that have been of interest since a pioneering study in 1989 suggesting that greenhouse gases increasing due to anthropogenic activity will produce not only a troposphere global warming, but a cooling in the upper atmosphere as well. Since then, long-term changes in the upper atmosphere, and particularly in the ionosphere, have become a significant topic in global change studies with many results already published. There are also other ionospheric long-term change forcings of natural origin, such as the Earth’s magnetic field secular variation with very special characteristics at equatorial and low latitudes. The ionosphere, as a part of the space weather environment, plays a crucial role to the point that it could certainly be said that space weather cannot be understood without reference to it. In this work, theoretical and experimental results on equatorial and low-latitude ionospheric trends linked to the geomagnetic field secular variation are reviewed and analyzed. Controversies and gaps in existing knowledge are identified together with important areas for future study. These trends, although weak when compared to other ionospheric variations, are steady and may become significant in the future and important even now for long-term space weather forecasts.

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 79-80
Author(s):  
A.G. Elias ◽  
◽  
B.S. Zossi ◽  
A.R. Gutierrez Falcon ◽  
E.S. Comedi ◽  
...  

Cosmic rays are modulated by solar and geomagnetic activity. In addition, the flux that arrives to the Earth is sensitive to the inner geomagnetic field through its effect on the geomagnetic cutoff rigidity, Rc. This field has been decaying globally at a rate of ~5% per century from at least 1840. However, due to its configuration and non-uniform trend around the globe, its secular variation during the last decades has induced negative and positive Rc trends depending on location. In the present work, the database from the World Data Center for Cosmic Rays (WDCCR) is used to analyze long-term trend variations linked to geomagnetic secular variations. This database includes more than 100 stations covering, some of them, almost seven decades since the 1950’s. Those stations spanning more than 20 years of data are selected for the present study in order to adequately filter solar activity effects.


2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lambert ◽  
Kenneth Prandy ◽  
Wendy Bottero

This paper discusses long term trends in patterns of intergenerational social mobility in Britain. We argue that there is convincing empirical evidence of a small but steady linear trend towards increasing social mobility throughout the period 1800-2004. Our conclusions are based upon the construction and analysis of an extended micro-social dataset, which combines records from an historical genealogical study, with responses from 31 sample surveys conducted over the period 1963-2004. There has been much previous study of trends in social mobility, and little consensus on their nature. We argue that this dissension partly results from the very slow pace of change in mobility rates, which makes the time-frame of any comparison crucial, and raises important methodological questions about how long-term change in mobility is best measured. We highlight three methodological difficulties which arise when trying to draw conclusions over mobility trends - concerning the extent of controls for life course effects; the quality of data resources; and the measurement of stratification positions. After constructing a longitudinal dataset which attempts to confront these difficulties, our analyses provide robust evidence which challenges hitherto more popular, politicised claims of declining or unchanging mobility. By contrast, our findings suggest that Britain has moved, and continues to move, steadily towards increasing equality in the relationship between occupational attainment and parental background.


2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Korte ◽  
Vincent Lesur

<p>Geomagnetic repeat station surveys with local variometers for improved data reductions have been carried out in Germany for about ten years. For nearly the same time interval the satellites Ørsted and CHAMP have provided a good magnetic field data coverage of the whole globe. Recent global field models based on these satellite data together with geomagnetic observatory data provide an improved description of the core field and secular variation. We use the latest version of the GFZ Reference Internal Magnetic Model to compare the magnetic field evolution predicted by that model between 2001 and 2010 to the independent repeat station data collected over the same time interval in Germany. Estimates of crustal bias at the repeat station locations are obtained as averages of the residuals, and the scatter or trend around each average provides information about influences in the data from field sources not (fully) described by the global model. We find that external magnetic field signal in the order of several nT, including long-term trends, remains both in processed annual mean and quiet night time repeat station data. We conclude that the geomagnetic core field secular variation in this area is described to high accuracy (better than 1 nT/yr) by the global model. Weak long-term trends in the residuals between repeat station data and the model might indicate induced lithospheric anomalies, but more data are necessary for a robust analysis of such signals characterized by very unfavorable signal-to-noise ratio.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-319
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Scott ◽  
Shannon Jones ◽  
Luke A. Barnard

Abstract. We present a method for augmenting spacecraft measurements of thermospheric composition with quantitative estimates of daytime thermospheric composition below 200 km, inferred from ionospheric data, for which there is a global network of ground-based stations. Measurements of thermospheric composition via ground-based instrumentation are challenging to make, and so details about this important region of the upper atmosphere are currently sparse. The visibility of the F1 peak in ionospheric soundings from ground-based instrumentation is a sensitive function of thermospheric composition. The ionospheric profile in the transition region between F1 and F2 peaks can be expressed by the “G” factor, a function of ion production rate and loss rates via ion–atom interchange reactions and dissociative recombination of molecular ions. This in turn can be expressed as the square of the ratio of ions lost via these processes. We compare estimates of the G factor obtained from ionograms recorded at Kwajalein (9∘ N, 167.2∘ E) for 25 times during which the Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere, Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) spacecraft recorded approximately co-located measurements of the neutral thermosphere. We find a linear relationship between G and the molecular-to-atomic composition ratio, with a gradient of 2.55±0.40. Alternatively, using hmF1 values obtained by ionogram inversion, this gradient was found to be 4.75±0.4. Further, accounting for equal ionisation in molecular and atomic species yielded a gradient of 4.20±0.8. This relationship has potential for using ground-based ionospheric measurements to infer quantitative variations in the composition of the neutral thermosphere via a relatively simple model. This has applications in understanding long-term change and the efficacy of the upper atmosphere on satellite drag.


1994 ◽  
Vol 85 (4) ◽  
pp. 239-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. R. Barraclough

AbstractMagnetic observations made at the same site give valuable information about the time changes (the secular variation) of the geomagnetic field. This paper gives details of all known measurements of the geomagnetic field in and around Edinburgh since the earliest observation of magnetic declination (the difference between true and magnetic north) by George Sinclair in 1670. Early observations of the strength of the field were only relative measurements. Approximate conversion factors are derived to enable these data to be expressed in modern absolute units (nanoteslas). Observed values of declination, inclination and the horizontal intensity of the geomagnetic field are plotted and compared with values computed from mathematical models of the field covering the interval 1690 to 1990, inclusive. The earlier observations were not corrected for the effects of the rapidly varying magnetic fields caused by electric currents in the upper atmosphere. The consequences of this are estimated.


2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (18) ◽  
pp. 4831-4843 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Jonathan Gero ◽  
David D. Turner

Abstract A trend analysis was applied to a 14-yr time series of downwelling spectral infrared radiance observations from the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) located at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM) site in the U.S. Southern Great Plains. The highly accurate calibration of the AERI instrument, performed every 10 min, ensures that any statistically significant trend in the observed data over this time can be attributed to changes in the atmospheric properties and composition, and not to changes in the sensitivity or responsivity of the instrument. The measured infrared spectra, numbering more than 800 000, were classified as clear-sky, thin cloud, and thick cloud scenes using a neural network method. The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-yr period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but it is increasing in the spring; these trends are statistically significant and are primarily due to long-term change in the cloudiness above the site. The AERI data also show many statistically significant trends on annual, seasonal, and diurnal time scales, with different trend signatures identified in the separate scene classifications. Given the decadal time span of the dataset, effects from natural variability should be considered in drawing broader conclusions. Nevertheless, this dataset has high value owing to the ability to infer possible mechanisms for any trends from the observations themselves and to test the performance of climate models.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 1821-1825 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Maraun

Abstract In his comment, G. Bürger criticizes the conclusion that inflation of trends by quantile mapping is an adverse effect. He assumes that the argument would be “based on the belief that long-term trends and along with them future climate signals are to be large scale.” His line of argument reverts to the so-called inflated regression. Here it is shown, by referring to previous critiques of inflation and standard literature in statistical modeling as well as weather forecasting, that inflation is built upon a wrong understanding of explained versus unexplained variability and prediction versus simulation. It is argued that a sound regression-based downscaling can in principle introduce systematic local variability in long-term trends, but inflation systematically deteriorates the representation of trends. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that inflation by construction deteriorates weather forecasts and is not able to correctly simulate small-scale spatiotemporal structure.


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