Ion production and ionization effect in the atmosphere during the Bastille day GLE 59 due to high energy SEPs

The influence of high energy particles, specifically cosmic rays, on atmospheric physics and chemistry is highly discussed. In most of the proposed models the role of ionization in the atmosphere due to cosmic rays is not negligible. Moreover, effect(s) on minor constituents and aerosols are recently observed, specifically over the polar regions during strong solar particle events. According to the recent findings for such effects it is necessary an essential increase of ion production, specifically during the winter period. The galactic cosmic rays are the main source of ionization in the Earth’s stratosphere and troposphere. Occasionally, the atmospheric ionization is significantly enhanced during strong solar energetic particles events, specifically over the polar caps. During the solar cycle 23 several strong ground level enhancements were observed. One of the strongest was the Bastille day event occurred on 14 July 2000. Using a full Monte Carlo 3-D model, we compute the atmospheric ionization, considering explicitly the contribution of cosmic rays with galactic and solar origin, focusing on high energy particles. The model is based on atmospheric cascade simulation with the PLANETOCOSMICS code. The ion production rate is computed as a function of the altitude above the sea level. The ion production rate is computed on a step ranging from 10 to 30?min throughout the event, considering explicitly the spectral and angular characteristics of the high energy part of solar protons as well as their time evolution. The corresponding event averaged ionization effect relative to the average due to galactic cosmic rays is computed in lower stratosphere and upper troposphere at various altitudes, namely 20?km, 15?km, 12?km and 8?km above the sea level in a sub-polar and polar regions. The 24^h and the weekly ionization effects are also computed in the troposphere and low stratosphere. Several applications are discussed.     

X-ray study of accretion flow in narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies

We present the results of a systematic study of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s) observed with XMM-Newton. The 2–12 keV X-ray spectra of NLS1s are well represented by a single power law with a photon index Γ ∼ 2. When this hard power law continuum is extrapolated into the low energy band, we found that all objects in our sample show prominent soft excess emission. This excess emission is well parameterized by the thermal emission expected from an optically thick accretion disk, and we found the following three peculiar features: (1) The derived disk temperatures are significantly higher than the expectation from a standard Shakura-Sunyaev accretion disk, if we assume a central mass of a black hole to be 10^6–8M_⊙. (2) The temperatures are distributed within narrow range (ΔkT ∼ 0.08 keV) with an average temperature of 0.18 keV in spite of the range of four orders of magnitude in luminosity (10^41–45 erg s⁻¹). (3) We found a peculiar temperature–luminosity relation, where the luminosity seems to be almost saturated in spite of the significant change in temperature, during the observations of the most luminous NLS1 PKS 0558-504. These results strongly suggest that the standard accretion disk picture is no longer appropriate in the nuclei of NLS1s. We discuss a possible origin for the soft excess component, and suggest that a slim disk may be able to explain the observational results, if the photon trapping effect is properly taken into account.     

Distributed weather radar using X-band active arrays

Dense networks of short-range radars capable of mapping storms and detecting atmospheric and airborne hazards are described. Comprised of physically small, low-power antennas, these networks defeat the Earth curvature blockage that limits today's long-range radar networks and enable high resolution views that extend from the lower-troposphere to the tops of storms. The networks are comprised of 1-meter antennas that transmit 10's of W peak power and are capable of high-speed electronic beam-steering. A system architecture is described that maximizes the value accrued to users of radar data through utility functions that specify dynamic, optimal allocation of resources in response to the needs of multiple end-users and associated information retrieval algorithms.     

Potential Plasma Instabilities For Substorm Expansion Onsets

Space plasmas present intriguing and challenging puzzles to the space community. Energy accessible to excite instabilities exists in a variety of forms, particularly for the magnetospheric environment prior to substorm expansion onsets. A general consensus of the pre-expansion magnetosphere is the development of a thin current sheet in the near-Earth magnetosphere. This review starts with a short account of the two major substorm paradigms. Highlights of some observations pertaining to the consideration of potential plasma instabilities for substorm expansion are given. Since a common thread of these paradigms is the development of a thin current sheet, several efforts to model analytically a thin current sheet configuration are described. This leads to a review on the instability analyses of several prominent candidates for the physical process responsible for substorm expansion onset. The potential instabilities expounded in this review include the cross-field current, lower-hybrid-drift, drift kink/sausage, current driven Alfvénic, Kelvin-Helmholtz, tearing, and entropy anti-diffusion instabilities. Some recent results from plasma simulations relevant to the investigation of these plasma instabilities are shown. Although some of these instabilities are generally conceived to be excited in spatially localized regions in the magnetosphere, their potentials in yielding global consequences are also explored.     

Microinstabilities associated with a high Mach number,perpendicular bow shock

The instabilities associated with a high Mach number perpendicular shock are reexamined in light of recent enhanced understanding of the Earth's bow shock. The insights provided by both the ISEE observations and hybrid simulations are reviewed and subsequently incorporated into the instability analyses. The discussion of the instabilities is divided according to their location in the shock layer. In the regions in front of and at the shock transition the cross-field instabilities are subdivided into low frequency modes (e.g. ion-ion streaming, kinetic cross-field streaming, drift lower hybrid instabilities) and high frequency modes (electron cyclotron drift, ion sound and electron whistler instabilities). Further downstream various ion ring-like and anisotropy driven instabilities are considered. In each case the instability analysis is reviewed and recent developments are emphasized. Implications of these results concerning the wave signatures and plasma heating and acceleration are also discussed.     

Modelling Short-Term Spectral Irradiance Variations

On time-scales of the solar rotation most of the solar irradiance variations are caused by the changing distribution of solar surface magnetic features. We model these short-term irradiance variations using calculations of sunspot and facular contrasts as a function of wavelength and limb angle on the Sun. The position of active regions on the solar disc is derived from the MDI magnetograms. The reconstructed irradiance variations are compared with total and spectral irradiance measurements obtained by the VIRGO experiment on SOHO.