Solar storms leave most of the Earth's atmosphere without electrons, according to a new study published in the journal Radio Science.
It is believed that when a solar storm reaches Earth, a collision with the planet's magnetosphere creates space through which a barrage of charged particles and electrons floods the ionosphere – the outer layer of the Earth's atmosphere. In other words, solar storms are most often associated with excess electrons. New data show in detail that electrons disappear from most of the atmosphere, while accumulating elsewhere.
“We carried out extensive measurements of a particular solar storm over the Arctic in 2014 and found that electrons in large quantities virtually disappeared from areas at altitudes between 500 and 1000 kilometers,” said Per Hoeg, a professor at the Technical University of Denmark in a press release. .
The main goal of Per and his colleagues at the Danish Technical University right now is to understand how electromagnetic storms affect communications and navigation systems. However, the researchers hope that their detailed analysis of the electromagnetic data will provide additional coverage of the missing electrons phenomenon.
“On a theoretical level, we found out that during solar storms electrons are removed from the ionosphere, which radically changes the current understanding of these processes.”
