Temporal variation of the arterial pressure in healthy young people and its relation to geomagnetic activity in Mexico

We present a study of the temporal behavior of the systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) blood pressure for a sample of 51 normotensive, healthy volunteers, 18 men and 33 women with an average age of 19 years old in Mexico City, Mexico, during April and May, 2008. We divided the data by sex along the circadian rhythm. Three geomagnetic storms occurred during the studied time-span. The strongest one, a moderate storm, is attributed to a coronal hole border that reached the Earth. The ANOVA test applied to the strongest storm showed that even though we are dealing with a moderate geomagnetic storm, there are statistically significant responses of the blood pressure. The superposed epoch analysis during a three-day window around the strongest storm shows that on average the largest changes occurred for the SBP. Moreover, the SBP largest increases occurred two days before and one day after this storm, and women are the most sensitive group as they present larger SBP and DBP average changes than men. Finally, given the small size of the sample, we cannot generalize our results.     

A new inversion method of plasma density distribution of plasmasphere in the geomagnetic equatorial plane from IMAGE data

The plasma density distribution of plasmasphere in the geomagnetic equatorial plane can help us study the magnetosphere like plasmasphere, ionosphere and their kinetics. In this paper, we introduce a new inversion method, GE-ART, to calculate the plasma density distribution in the geomagnetic equatorial plane from the Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) data of IMAGE satellite under the assumption that the plasma density is constant along each geomagnetic field line. The new GE-ART algorithm was derived from the traditional Algebraic Reconstruction Techniques (ART) in Computed Tomography (CT) which was different from the several existing methods. In this new method, each value of the EUV image data was back-projected evenly to the geomagnetic field lines intersected by this EUV sight. A 3-D inversion matrix was produced by the contributions of all the voxels contained in the plasmasphere covered by the EUV sensor. That is, we considered that each value of the EUV image data was relative to the plasma densities of all the voxels passed through by the corresponding EUV radiation, which is the biggest difference to all the existing inversion methods. Finally, the GE-ART algorithm was evaluated by the real EUV data from the IMAGE satellite.     

Solar, geomagnetic and cosmic ray intensity changes, preceding the cyclone appearances around Mexico

Recently it has been suggested that there exist specific changes in the cosmic ray intensity and some solar and geomagnetic parameters during the days, preceding the hurricane appearances over the North Atlantic Ocean. To understand better these phenomena, data for all hurricanes born not only over the Atlantic but also over the Pacific waters in the last 55 years that hit the Mexican borders were elaborated. As basic hurricane parameters the maximum rotational velocity and the estimated total energy were used. To avoid any interference all hurricanes, overlapping the preceding ones with more than 20 days were not included. Then the behavior of the cosmic ray (CR) intensity, the sunspot (SS) numbers, and the geomagnetic parameters (AP) and (KP) in 35 days prior and 20 days after the cyclone start were investigated. The CR, SS, AP and KP showed much more intensive disturbances in the periods preceding and following the hurricane appearance. For SS this disturbance gradually increase with the hurricane strength. A characteristic peak in the CR intensity appears before the hurricane start. But its place varies between 5 and 20 days before that start. Specific changes were observed in the SS. For major hurricanes they begins sometimes more than 20 days in advance. The AP and the KP show series of bursts, spread over the whole period of 30 preceding days. The obtained results from the performed correlational analysis are enough interesting to motivate a further statistical analysis with more precise techniques: in particular a common periodicity of 30 years found in the number of tropical storms landing into Mexico, the averaged rotational wind velocity and the ACE must be studied in connection with the solar Hale cycle. Using coherence wavelet spectral analysis we present a comparative study between one terrestrial and one cosmophysical phenomena that presumable influence hurricanes development: African dust outbreaks versus cosmic rays for all North Atlantic tropical cyclones. It is shown that the cosmophysical influence cannot be considered as a negligible effect.     

Global solar magnetic field evolution inferred from geomagnetic variations

I have analyzed geomagnetic disturbance index C9, mean solar magnetic field observed at Stanford Solar Observatory for the interval January 13, 1976 – December 30, 1993. It has been established a good correspondence between high-intensity geomagnetic recurrent and solar magnetic field patterns during whole period analyzed. A surprising thing is that the behavior of the solar mean field and interplanetary medium in the latest two solar cycles is very similar. Geomagnetic activity variations actually could serve as an ecliptic monitor of solar magnetic field structure and its evolution.     

Forecasting of DST variations from polar cap indices using neural networks

The 15-min averaged polar cap (PC) index was used as an input parameter for the Dst variation forecasting. The PC index is known to describe well the principal features of the solar wind as well as the total energy input to the magnetosphere. This allowed us to design a neural network able to forecast the Dst variations from 1 to 4 h ahead. 1998 PC and Dst data sets were used for training and testing and 1997 data sets was used for validation proposes. From the 15 moderate and strong geomagnetic storms observed during 1997, nine were successfully forecasted. In three cases the observed minimum Dst value was less than the predicted one, and only in three cases the neural network was not able to reproduce the features of the geomagnetic storm.     

Responses of the African equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA) to some selected intense geomagnetic storms during the maximum phase of solar cycle 24

This study investigates the morphology of the GPS TEC responses in the African Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA) region to intense geomagnetic storms during the ascending and maximum phases of solar cycle 24 (2012–2014). Specifically, eight intense geomagnetic storms with Dst ≤ ?100 nT were considered in this investigation using TEC data obtained from 13 GNSS receivers in the East African region within 36–42°E geographic longitude; 29°N–10°S geographic latitude; ± 20°N magnetic latitude. The storm-time behavior of TEC shows clear positive and negative phases relative to the non-storm (median) behavior, with amplitudes being dependent on the time of sudden commencement of the storm and location. When a storm starts in the morning period, total electron content increases for all stations while a decrease in total electron content is manifested for a storm that had its sudden commencement in the afternoon period. The TEC and the EIA crest during the main phase of the storm is significantly impacted by the geomagnetic storm, which experiences an increase in the intensity of TEC while the location and spread of the crest usually manifest a poleward expansion.     

1978—1988年间磁扰的分析与日地耦合

用1978-1988年间行星际磁场(IMF)的B_z分量、极光区AL指数和赤道附近地磁台Z分量等资料探讨了日地耦合中的主要物理过程。B_z的11年变化大致与太阳活动程度相当,但AL和赤道附近ΔZ更多地受磁层和电离层内部过程所控制。分析中强调了对国际磁抗日按物理过程进行分类的必要性。      

Observing the Sun at 20–650 MHz at Thermopylae with Artemis

Fine structure of type IV radio solar bursts with a great variety and complexity often give much information in different ways and enable estimation of various coronal characteristics. In this work, we expose our new method for fine structure revealing and separation of two basic kinds of type IV fine structure, as fibers and pulsations. We also estimate frequency drift of fibers from dynamic spectra, clean from continuous background, with a prototype method using 2-D Fourier transform and we estimate periodicities of fibers as well as pulsations with continuous wavelet transform. Working with the last method we found periodicities close to 3 min umbral oscillations and 5 min global solar oscillations.     

基于弹道模型的磁测系统偏航干扰误差分析

常规弹丸在使用地磁算法测量滚转角的过程中,常将偏航角设为0°解算弹丸滚转角。当弹丸在飞行过程中偏航角发生变化时,滚转角解算精度受到一定影响。针对偏航角变化带来的误差与多种因素有关,且规律不清楚。在建立偏航角误差系数的基础上,使用Matlab软件建立了弹丸在不同偏航角、俯仰角、射向条件下的误差模型。首先建立了横风修正的质点弹道模型,通过蒙特卡罗方法仿真弹丸的轨迹分布,分析了弹载环境下磁测算法的滚转角误差,并验证了误差系数的准确性。通过仿真验证,误差系数可以较准确地表示滚转角误差与偏航角变化之间的关系,误差系数计算的误差与理论误差的差值小于10%,为后续实弹试验做好理论准备。     

Effects of geomagnetic secular variations on cosmic ray access to the terrestrial environment

Taking advantage of the cutoff computations performed for more than a hundred locations from 1955 to 1995 [every 5 years; Shea, M.A., Smart, D.F. Vertical cutoff rigidities for cosmic ray stations since 1955, in: Proceedings of the ICRC 2001, Hamburg, Copernicus Gesellschaft, vol. 10, pp. 4063–4066, 2001], we carefully checked the relationship between the vertical cutoff rigidity and the McIlwain parameter introduced by Shea et al. [Shea, M.A., Smart, D.F., Gentile, L.C. Estimating cosmic ray vertical cutoff rigidities as a function of the McIlwain L-parameter for different epochs of the geomagnetic field. Phys. Earth Planet. Int., 48, 200–205, 1987]. We derived an updated algorithm that can be used outside the polar and equatorial regions, avoiding time consuming computations. Results for the European area and 1990 epoch suggest that the fast evaluation is accurate within 0.1 GV in 26 out of the 30 considered locations.