Observations and Modeling Studies of Solar Eclipse Effects on Oblique High Frequency Radio Propagation

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dc.contributor.authorMoses, M. L.en
dc.contributor.authorKordella, L. J.en
dc.contributor.authorEarle, Gregory D.en
dc.contributor.authorDrob, Douglas P.en
dc.contributor.authorHuba, J. D.en
dc.contributor.authorRuohoniemi, John M.en
dc.contributor.authorShepherd, Simon G.en
dc.contributor.authorSivakumar, Ven
dc.contributor.departmentElectrical and Computer Engineeringen
dc.date.accessioned2021-08-03T14:43:43Zen
dc.date.available2021-08-03T14:43:43Zen
dc.date.issued2021-03en
dc.description.abstractThe total solar eclipse over the continental United States on 21 August 2017 offered a unique opportunity to study the dependence of the ionospheric density and morphology on incident solar radiation at different local times. The Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) radars in Christmas Valley, Oregon, and Fort Hays, Kansas, are located slightly southward of the line of totality; they both made measurements of the eclipsed ionosphere. The received power of backscattered signal decreases during the eclipse, and the slant ranges from the westward looking radar beams initially increase and then decrease after totality. The time scales over which these changes occur at each site differ significantly from one another. For Christmas Valley the propagation changes are fairly symmetric in time, with the largest slant ranges and smallest power return occurring coincident with the closest approach of totality to the radar. The Fort Hays signature is less symmetric. In order to investigate the underlying processes governing the ionospheric eclipse response, we use a ray-tracing code to simulate SuperDARN data in conjunction with different eclipsed ionosphere models. In particular, we quantify the effect of the neutral wind velocity on the simulated data by testing the effect of adding/removing various neutral wind vector components. The results indicate that variations in meridional winds have a greater impact on the modeled ionospheric eclipse response than do variations in zonal winds. The geomagnetic field geometry and the line-of-sight angle from each site to the Sun appear to be important factors that influence the ionospheric eclipse response.en
dc.description.notesFunding for this research was provided by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) grant NASA #NNX17AH70G, National Science Foundation (NSF) grant NSF #AGS-1552188, a Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC) 2015-2016 Undergraduate Research Fellowship, and 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 VSGC Graduate Research Fellowships. The ray tracing results presented in this paper were obtained using the HF propagation toolbox, PHaRLAP, created by Dr. Manuel Cervera, Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Australia(manuel.cervera@dsto.defence.gov.au). Funding for operations of U.S. SuperDARN radars is provided by NSF grants AGS-1341925 and AGS-1934997 (for Dartmouth College) and AGS-1341918 and AGS-1935110 (for Virginia Tech). Data analysis and visualizations in this paper were generated by employing several free open-source software packages including matplotlib (Hunter, 2007), iPython (Perez & Granger, 2007), SciPy (Virtanen et al., 2020), NumPy (van derWalt et al., 2011), and DaViTPy (Ribeiro et al., 2020), among others. Note that DaViTPy was depreciated upon the release of pyDARN (Schmidt et al., 2020) in May 2020, after the work presented in this paper was completed. Also, we acknowledge the contributions of New Jersey Institute of Technology Eclipse Team (especially Joshua Vega, Joshua Katz, and Nathaniel Frissell) to our initial development of supporting Matlab functions for the use of SAMI3 output files with PHaRLAP.en
dc.description.sponsorshipNational Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) [NNX17AH70G]; National Science Foundation (NSF)National Science Foundation (NSF) [AGS-1552188, AGS-1341925, AGS-1934997, AGS-1341918, AGS-1935110]; Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC) 2015-2016 Undergraduate Research Fellowship; 2017-2018 VSGC Graduate Research Fellowship; 2018-2019 VSGC Graduate Research Fellowshipen
dc.description.versionPublished versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1029/2020SW002560en
dc.identifier.eissn1542-7390en
dc.identifier.issue3en
dc.identifier.othere2020SW002560en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/104555en
dc.identifier.volume19en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/en
dc.subjectsolar eclipseen
dc.subjectSuperDARNen
dc.subjectray traceen
dc.subjectmidlatitude ionosphereen
dc.titleObservations and Modeling Studies of Solar Eclipse Effects on Oblique High Frequency Radio Propagationen
dc.title.serialSpace Weather-The International Journal of Research and Applicationsen
dc.typeArticle - Refereeden
dc.type.dcmitypeTexten
dc.type.dcmitypeStillImageen

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