Atmospheric electric field anomalies associated with solar flare/coronal mass ejection events and solar energetic charged particle "Ground Level Events"

We discuss the fair weather atmospheric electric field signatures of three major solar energetic charged particle events which occurred in on 15 April 2001, 18 April and 4 November, and their causative solar flares/coronal mass ejections (SF/CMEs). Only the 15 April 2001 shows clear evidence for Ez variation associated to SF/CME events and the other two events may support this hypothesis as well although for them the meteorological data were not available. All three events seem to be associated with relativistic solar protons (i.e. protons with energies >450 MeV) of the Ground Level Event (GLE) type. The study presents data on variations of the vertical component of the atmospheric electric field (Ez) measured at the auroral station Apatity (geomagnetic latitude: 63.8°, the polar cap station Vostok (geomagnetic latitude: −89.3°) and the middle latitude stations Voyeikovo (geomagnetic latitude: 56.1°) and Nagycenk (geomagnetic latitude: 47.2°). A significant disturbance in the atmospheric electric field is sometimes observed close to the time of the causative solar flare; the beginning of the electric field perturbation at Apatity is detected one or two hours before the flare onset and the GLE onset. Atmospheric electric field records at Vostok and Voyeikovo show a similar disturbance at the same time for the 15 April 2001 event. Some mechanisms responsible for the electric field perturbations are considered.