VLF Workshop, Sodankylä, Finland, 27th September - 1st October 2004

The relative impacts of energetic precipitation in the southern Polar Cap and Geomagnetic Anomaly during a solar proton event

Mark Clilverd¹, Craig Rodger², Neil Thomson², Th. Ulich³, Esa Turunen³, Annika Seppälä⁴, Aurelien Botman¹

¹British Antarctic Survey (NERC), Cambridge, U.K.
²University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
³Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, Sodankylä, Finland
⁴Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland

Abstract

In this study we aim to compare the impacts of an intense solar proton event simultaneously on two separate regions. We investigate the impact in the Southern Polar Cap and the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly of changes produced by energetic precipitation in the atmosphere (<100km). We study the SPE of 4/5 November 2001 when large fluxes of high energy protons were observed at geostationary orbits. We show that a complex model of the atmosphere (SIC) can accurrately represent the ionization changes that occurred at high latitude. The simultaneous impact in the SAMA are discussed in terms of relative ionization and potential nitrogen/ozone changes.