RAPID: Bridging Support for Greenland West Coast Magnetometers Conjugate to Antarctic Magnetometer Chain

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

This is a one-year effort to support the continued operation of a network of research magnetometer stations along the west coast of Greenland. The main objective is to prevent a gap in the operation of these stations during the transition in responsibility from the Danish Meteorological Institute to the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark that has been initiated recently. The bridging support provided with this effort will maintain these stations during the next year while the Danish National Space Institute (DNSI) secures research funding to continue the support and operation of these stations. DNSI has already obtained support to continue the operation of the three full geomagnetic observatories in Greenland. This provides an infrastructure in place within Greenland so that only modest additional support is required to operate the additional 9 magnetic variometer research stations along the western coast. The observations from this network constitute a longstanding valuable asset to the international space physics research community. Amongst other, they provide important context information for many studies being conducted with the NSF Incoherent Scatter Radar in Sondre Stromfjord. Currently, they also form an essential part of inter-hemispherical comparative studies conducted with recently installed and planned magnetometers and other geophysical observation stations in Antarctica, which are deployed at locations exactly designed to form a hemispherical conjugate constellation to the Greenland network. An extended gap in this data source would cause significant complications and delay the progress on a large number of ongoing and planned research projects. The project will be carried out in close collaboration between researchers in the US and Denmark and also includes travel support for a student from the US to work with the Danish team over the summer.