US-China Planning Visit: Understanding earth's Solar Wind-Magnetosphere-Ionosphere system from the Antarctic

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NSF funding will support planning visits to promote and develop a new collaboration with Dr. Yonghua Liu and his research group at the Polar Research Institute of China, in Shanghai. The collaboration centers on the combination of data obtained from autonomous space weather stations operated in remote polar Antarctic locations by the Chinese group and the Virginia Tech Center for Space Science and Engineering Research. The stations are at synergistic locations in the Antarctic to enable investigations of: 1) the coupling of energy from the solar wind to the magnetosphere and ionosphere through the associated development of electrical current systems in space and in the ionosphere; 2) the production of density irregularities in the high latitude ionosphere that can disrupt communication and navigation systems and 3) the energization of charged particles in space that can damage satellite electronics. The Solar Wind-Magnetosphere-Ionosphere is a complex natural system that can impact a variety of human technology. To forecast and mitigate that impact is a major goal of the U. S. National Space Weather Program. Achieving this goal is hampered, however, by the lack of sufficient data coverage to validate global models, particularly in the southern hemisphere. The recent availability of data from autonomous space weather stations deployed along a latitude chain in the Antarctic by Virginia Tech enables new investigations of the Sun-Earth system. China, one of the leading countries actively involved in the Antarctic programs, is operating stations in the East Antarctic that complement the Virginia Tech stations by adding a longitudinal chain. Considering the extreme conditions of weather and logistics in the Antarctic, international collaboration enables more efficient and more wide-ranging investigations using data from the combined stations. The Virginia Tech and Chinese stations together monitor the region where the geomagnetic field lines that interact with the solar wind intersect the dayside high latitude ionosphere, thus enabling investigation of the processes that couple energy from the solar wind to the magnetosphere and ionosphere. The collaborative work will greatly expand scientific investigations that could not be accomplished by either data set alone.