Yaniv, R.; Yair, Y.; Price, C.; Reuveni, Y. No Response of Surface-Level Atmospheric Electrical Parameters in Israel to Severe Space Weather Events. Atmosphere2023, 14, 1649.
Yaniv, R.; Yair, Y.; Price, C.; Reuveni, Y. No Response of Surface-Level Atmospheric Electrical Parameters in Israel to Severe Space Weather Events. Atmosphere 2023, 14, 1649.
Yaniv, R.; Yair, Y.; Price, C.; Reuveni, Y. No Response of Surface-Level Atmospheric Electrical Parameters in Israel to Severe Space Weather Events. Atmosphere2023, 14, 1649.
Yaniv, R.; Yair, Y.; Price, C.; Reuveni, Y. No Response of Surface-Level Atmospheric Electrical Parameters in Israel to Severe Space Weather Events. Atmosphere 2023, 14, 1649.
Abstract
We report on ground-based measurements of the atmospheric electric field (Ez= -Potential Gradient (PG)) and current density (Jz) that were conducted at two locations in Israel. One is the Emilio Segre cosmic ray station located on Mt. Hermon (34.45 N, 2020 m AMSL) located in northern Israel near the Syrian-Lebanon border and at the other at the Wise astronomical observatory in the Negev desert highland plateau of southern Israel (31.18 N, 870 m AMSL). We searched for possible effects of strong, short-term solar events on the potential gradient and the vertical current density, as disruption to the Global Electric Circuit are often observed following strong solar events. The first case study (St. Patrick Day, 17 March 2015) was classified as the strongest event of 2015. The second case study (8 Sep 2017) was categorized as the strongest event of 2017 and one of the twenty strongest events on record to date. The results show that the electrical parameters measured at ground level at both stations were not affected during the two massive proton events and the ensuing geomagnetic storms. The magnetospheric shielding in lower latitudes is strong enough to shield against flux of energetic particles from solar events, obscuring any impact that may be noticeable above the local daily variations induced by local meteorological conditions (aerosol concentrations, clouds, high humidity, and wind speed) which were investigated as well.
Keywords
space weather; global electric circuit; fair weather; electric field; current density; solar proton events; coronal mass ejection
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Atmospheric Science and Meteorology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
