Nowcasting Space Weather Impacts on Polar HF Communications (original) (raw)

2016

Abstract

Aircraft operating on trans-polar routes require reliable HF (3-30 MHz) radio communications links to be maintained throughout each flight. However, solar flares and interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICME) can often result in enhancements of the electron density in the Earth’s ionosphere, which can strongly attenuate HF radio waves in the Polar Regions. In some cases this can result in the cancellation or diversion of flights for periods of several days. This paper describes the scientific basis for an online service for airlines that predicts HF radio coverage for polar flight routes by combining nowcast maps of HF absorption in the lower (D-region) ionosphere with ray-tracing radio propagation algorithms. The absorption maps are generated by assimilating real-time measurements of cosmic radio noise absorption from 25 ‘relative ionospheric opacity meters’ (riometers) deployed across Canada and Scandinavia. These data are combined with real-time X-ray flux and energetic (1-100 ...

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