MRI: Development of Monitors for Alaskan and Canadian Auroral Weather in Space (MACAWS)

Northeast Radio Observatory Corp, Westford MA

Investigators

Abstract

This Major Research Instrumentation development award is for the creation of a network of ground-based receivers that can use satellite navigation signals to provide crucial information about the Earth's ionosphere. This network will include 35 sites in Alaska and Canada, bringing additional measurements to a data-sparse region. The development activities also include making the system dynamic, adaptable, and autonomous. Improving the amount and quality of data will help to answer many questions about the basic ionospheric processes, which could lead to improvements in the robustness of satellite navigation systems. Many of the receivers will also be placed at schools, providing an educational benefit to the students. The goal of this development award is to provide a ground-based sensor web network that provides both real-time and historical Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) ionospheric data products for use in geospace science and space weather monitoring in currently unsampled or under-sampled auroral/polar regions in North America. A sensor web is a dynamic, adaptable, and autonomous network of sensors that can use artificial intelligence to react in real time to information from its instruments. Thirty-five GNSS receivers will be deployed in Alaska and Canada to retrieve Total Electron Content (TEC) and scintillation statistics. The project will result in the creation of a unified North American TEC map, development and deployment of triggering algorithms for highly dynamic periods, and the distribution of real-time TEC data to users. Four specific scientific topics would be addressed: 1) What mechanism is responsible for the formation of polar cap patches? And how do polar cap patches exit the night-side polar cap? What is the relationship of the tongue of ionization to polar cap patches? 2) What contribution does the lower atmosphere make to variability in the high-latitude ionosphere? 3) What causes the irregularities that form at the front of the tongue of ionization in the nightside polar ionosphere? What causes the irregularities that form with the SED plume as observed by SuperDarn? 4) What are the specific auroral and sub-auroral mechanisms that produce GPS scintillations?