Innovative Advances in Understanding Auroral Phenomena by Harnessing the Power of Citizen Science

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Auroral lights or aurora have long fascinated humans living or traveling at high latitudes. During strong geomagnetic disturbances aurora can be seen at middle latitudes where most human population lives. Despite decades of research, significant gaps remain in the understanding of auroral processes, with accurate predictions of the aurora remaining a particular challenge. This award seeks to utilize amateur auroral observers and modern communication technologies to improve accuracy of auroral predictions and provide additional characterization of auroral enhancements at middle latitudes during significant auroral disturbances. Assimilative data techniques will be developed to better utilize amateur auroral imagery to improve predictive capabilities. Accurate auroral forecasting is important for building the next generation of space weather models as well as for the auroral tourism industry. This project will enhance public engagement in scientific research and promote public understanding and awareness of space weather effects. Additional characterization of the aurora and related space weather phenomena will provide important feedback to communities that are responsible for protecting critical infrastructure during large geomagnetic disturbances.This study is composed of tw-o parts: (1) the development of a state-of-the-art auroral model that can assimilate real-time soft sensor data (amateur reports and imagers) with existing empirical models to improve knowledge of auroral oval specification and (2) a comprehensive study of middle-latitude auroral enhancements using high-quality citizen-science images. Both projects enable improved understanding of the coupling between different parts of the near-Earth plasma environment. The project will assimilate real-time soft sensor (human) aurora data, that is particularly abundant during strong disturbances, with existing empirical models to reduce uncertainties in the source data and provide improved knowledge of the global state of the auroral oval in comparison to the current state-of-the-art.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.