Position-Dependent Space Weather Hazards of Societal Significance in the Earth-Ionosphere Waveguide

拟议研究的目标是大大提高我们理解和预测空间天气对（1）电网的危害的能力;（2）高达~20 kHz的地球电离层波导中的电磁波传播。拟议工作的方法是推进和应用详细的，高分辨率的麦克斯韦方程模型的地球电离层波导在过去十年中开发的项目。该项目的三维模型完美地包含了诸如地球？的完整地形，海洋，岩石圈组成，地磁场，电离层等离子体。拟议的研究是独一无二的，因为现有的分析公式或计算方法应用于上述研究主题并没有解决完整的麦克斯韦方程，同时也考虑到所有的3-D几何细节和时间变化，如项目的模型所允许的。然而，1859年CME驱动的地磁风暴的再次发生可能会对今天的人类社会造成比1859年更大程度的破坏，这是由于重要但可行的电子技术的扩散。所提出的建模的第一个目标是帮助个人电网站了解他们的具体脆弱性空间天气。提出的建模的第二个目标是帮助提高我们的理解电磁传播在地球电离层波导在干扰条件下。这项工作的应用包括：低电离层的遥感，假设的电磁地震前兆，闪电传播，地理定位，通信，甚至全球温度变化。

The goal of the proposed research is to greatly improve our ability to understand and predictspace weather hazards to (1) electric power grids; and (2) electromagnetic wave propagation inthe Earth-ionosphere waveguide up to ~20 kHz. The methodology of the proposed work is toadvance and apply detailed, high-resolution Maxwell's equations models of the Earth-ionospherewaveguide developed by the project over the past decade. The project's three-dimensional (3-D) modelsuniquely include such details as the Earth?s complete topography, oceans, lithospherecomposition, geomagnetic field, and ionospheric plasma. The proposed research study is unique as existing analytical formulations or computationalapproaches applied to the investigated topics above do not solve the complete Maxwell'sequations while also accounting for all of the 3-D geometrical details and time variability aspermitted by the project's models.A 2008 National Academies report indicates that extreme spaceweather events, "though rare, are likely to occur again some time in the future." However, a re-occurrenceof an 1859-magnitude CME-driven geomagnetic storm could disrupt today's humansociety to a much greater degree than in 1859 due to the proliferation of vital but vulnerableelectro-technologies. The first goal of the proposed modeling is to help individual power gridstations understand their specific vulnerability to space weather. The second goal of theproposed modeling is to help improve our understanding of electromagnetic propagation in theEarth-ionosphere waveguide under disturbed conditions. Applications that may benefit from thiswork include: remote sensing of the lower ionosphere, hypothesized electromagnetic earthquakeprecursors, propagation from lightning, geolocation, communications, and even globaltemperature change.