The Virginia Tech University media office indicates that the magnetic storm that hit the Earth last May caused, in addition to the aurora borealis in the tropical regions and temperate latitudes of the Earth, changes in the structure of the Earth’s atmosphere as well.
“The aurora intensification at low latitudes was accompanied by warming of the atmosphere around the Earth’s poles, which accelerated the flow of air from the poles towards the equator,” says Scott England, an associate professor at the university. “So we now need to determine whether these changes are due only to the magnetic storm in May, or whether they always occur during strong magnetic storms.”
The researchers discovered these changes by analyzing data they collected during the magnetic storm in May with the help of the GOLD probe, which monitors the boundary between the atmosphere and space during magnetic storms and other changes that occur in “space weather.” They tracked how the composition and properties of Earth’s thermosphere and upper atmosphere changed on May 9-14.
Calculations showed that the onset of the magnetic storm was accompanied by a sudden increase in the temperature of the Earth’s thermosphere at the poles, where charged particles from near-Earth space easily penetrate. Their interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field and ions heated the atmosphere, with the temperature in the polar regions rising by 1.4 thousand Kelvin at an altitude of 160 km above the Earth’s surface.
According to scientists, this heating led to a global restructuring of the atmosphere and serious changes in the proportions of oxygen atoms and nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere, as well as the emergence of air currents and vortices towards the equatorial region. In addition, researchers observed anomalous movements and interactions of low-energy particles that had not been observed before during magnetic storms.
Source: TASS
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2024-08-20 13:28:32
