Geomagnetic Storms and Substorms as Space Weather I nfluence on Atmospheric Electric Field Variations

Abstract

The atmospheric electric field (Ez) exists in the Earth's atmosphere at any location on the globe due the phenomenon called the global atmospheric electric circuit. This global circuit is controlled mainly by the world thunderstorm and shower clouds activity which act as generators, and the cosmic rays as well solar electromagnetic radiation, which modify its load. Moreover, the Earth's magnetosphere-ionosphere disturbances, caused by interaction with solar wind, could influence this state as well. Here we present an overview of our main results of the study of the potential effects in Ez caused by geomagnetic storms and substorms as an important factor of the space weather. Our results are based of the Ez observations at the mid-latitude Polish station Swider (near Warsaw) and high-latitude Polish station Horsund (Spitsbergen archipelago). The effect of magnetic storms, associated with a coronal mass ejection from the Sun, was detected in the mid-latitude atmospheric electricity as strong daytime Ez negative anomalies in relation with simultaneous occurrence of night-side magnetospheric substorms. However, at high-latitudes, the auroral-latitude magnetic substorm lead to the simultaneous polar-latitude Ez deviations, positive in the local morning and negative in the evening, corresponding to the station's location relative to the "positive" or "negative" center of the polar ionosphere convection vortex. Thus, ground-based Ez recordings could be one of the very sensible tools to study solar windmagnetosphere-ionosphere-atmosphere interactions.