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

利用公民科学的力量在理解极光现象方面取得创新进展

• 批准号: 1823622
• 负责人: Matt Heavner
• 金额: $ 34.4万
• 依托单位: New Mexico Consortium
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-07-15 至 2024-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1823622&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Innovative; Advances; Understanding; Auroral; Phenomena

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.

极光或极光长期以来一直吸引着生活或旅行在高纬度地区的人们。在强地磁扰动期间，在大多数人口居住的中纬度地区可以看到极光。尽管进行了数十年的研究，但在对极光过程的理解方面仍然存在重大差距，准确预测极光仍然是一个特别的挑战。该奖项旨在利用业余极光观测者和现代通信技术，提高极光预测的准确性，并提供在严重极光扰动期间中纬度极光增强的额外特征。将开发同化数据技术，以便更好地利用业余极光图像，提高预测能力。准确的极光预报对于建立下一代空间天气模型和极光旅游业都很重要。该项目将加强公众对科学研究的参与，并促进公众对空间气象影响的了解和认识。对极光和相关空间气象现象的进一步定性将为负责在大的地磁扰动期间保护关键基础设施的社区提供重要的反馈。（1）开发一个能够吸收实时软传感器数据的最先进的极光模型（2）利用高质量的公民科学图像对中纬度极光增强进行全面研究。这两个项目都有助于更好地了解近地等离子体环境不同部分之间的耦合。该项目将吸收实时软传感器（人类）极光数据，这在强干扰期间特别丰富，与现有的经验模型，以减少源数据的不确定性，并提供更好的知识的全球状态的极光椭圆相比，目前的状态，该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过利用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响进行评估，被认为值得支持审查标准。