The role of electric fields in climate variability and space weather

The interaction between the expanding solar corona, or solar wind, on the Earth’s magnetic field and upper atmosphere is not only responsible for significant impacts on terrestrial space and ground based technologies, such as communications, navigation, oil pipelines, but also leads to potential affects in the lower atmosphere. The nature of these effects is only just being elucidated, but e.g. there is recent clear evidence that the surface pressure is correlated with interplanetary conditions. Identifying the significance of these effects compared with anthropogenic factors is critical for a full understanding of climate change. The coupling between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field drives an electric field in the upper atmosphere which represents the behaviour of the large scale dynamics of the overall system.
We are able to measure this electric field using a network of ground based radars, the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network, SuperDARN, which provide near global coverage in the northern hemisphere polar cap, auroral and sub-auroral regions. There will be two central themes to this project, one of which is the impact of the electric field in the troposphere while the potential larger scale impacts on terrestrial based technologies is the second.
A critical component of the project will be to assimilate the electric field observations into new Met Office atmospheric models being developed to investigate the whole atmosphere as a step towards improving understanding of the influence of Space Weather on weather forecasting and our climate.

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