SuperMAG: High Time-resolution Data Enabling Global UltraLow Frequency (ULF) Studies

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

This research will develop and provide a new SuperMAG project capability for organizing, storing, and disseminating high time resolution data from world-wide arrays of fluxgate and induction coil magnetometer for magnetospheric ultralow frequency (ULF) waves and substorm-related investigations. SuperMAG is a worldwide collaboration of organizations and national agencies that currently operate >300 ground-based magnetometers. This research effort will gather and organize high-time resolution data, write software packages to pre-process and process high time resolution fluxgate and induction coil magnetometers data, and disseminate them to the community on the SuperMAG website. The resulting data product will enable studies of global ULF activity by allowing easy access to high time resolution measurement (<5sec), derived data products, plots and other tools. Availability of the new data product will provide new opportunities of research to students. The project will also foster education and public outreach activities, which are already a key component of SuperMAG. This research will enhance the current SuperMAG capabilities by expanding its ground-based magnetometer data holdings from 1-minute cadence to higher sampling rates (< 5 sec) of both fluxgate and induction coil arrays and by developing additional data products that will make observations of ULF waves and substorm-related variations in these high-cadence data more easily accessed and understood by the wider geospace science community. The high time-resolution magnetometer dataset will enhance studies of substorm-related processes because of the availability of data on Pi1b wave activity (higher frequency than Pi2, but also generated in association with nightside magnetic field dipolarizations), and studies of radiation belt enhancement and loss processes because of the availability of the full range of ULF waves, including in particular electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves generated in the middle and inner magnetosphere. The implementation of high time-resolution data, along with the new addition of satellite footpoints to SuperMAG, will foster collaborations between the satellite community and the ground community for new scientific areas such as ULF waves. The project will foster education and public outreach (EPO) activities, which are already a key component of SuperMAG. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.