Continuing Operation of a Magnetometer Array on the Greenland Ice Cap (MAGIC) to Investigate Propagating Ionospheric Current Systems for Geospace Environment Modeling

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This proposal is directed toward the continued operation of an array of unattended, automatic magnetic data collection platforms on the Greenland ice cap and the reduction, distribution and analysis of these data. The MAGIC array complements the magnetic stations on the coasts of Greenland. The MAGIC magnetic stations form a two dimensional array with station separation of about 150 Km. The scientific objective of these magnetic measurements is to investigate, in conjunction with the coastal stations, small-scale propagating magnetic disturbances which appear to result from moving filamentary field-aligned currents interacting with the ionosphere. Different classes of these systems have now been identified and the origin of the field-aligned currents appears to be near the dayside magnetopause within the magnetospheric boundary layer. It is particularly important to have a dense two- dimensional array in order to resolve the motion and structural evolution of these current systems. The Greenland stations in combination with the other GEM funded stations deployed in Canada, permit us to observe these phenomena over a sufficient region as to identify their generation location and resolve their motion and spatial evolution as the propagate. These data and the proposed research are important to understanding the physics of the processes which couple energy and momentum from the solar wind to the magnetosphere and ionosphere, the physics of the magnetospheric boundary layer and the mapping of boundary layer phenomena to the high-latitude ionosphere.