An investigation into the correlation of geomagnetic storms with tropospheric parameters over the South Pole

• Main Authors: Lam, M. M., Rodger, A. S.
• Other Authors: British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2003
• Subjects: [SDU.OCEAN]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Ocean; Atmosphere; [SDU.STU]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences; Antarctic; Rodger; South Pole; The Antarctic; Antarc*; South pole
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-00317058; https://hal.science/hal-00317058/document; https://hal.science/hal-00317058/file/angeo-21-1095-2003.pdf

International audience We test the proposal that the Sun's magnetic activity, communicated via the solar wind, provides a link between solar variability and the Earth's climate in the Antarctic troposphere. The strength of a geomagnetic storm is one indicator of the state of the solar wind; therefore, we use the dates of 51 moderate to strong winter geomagnetic storms from the period 1961?1990 to conduct a series of superposed epoch analyses of the winter South Pole isobaric height and temperature, at pressures of between 100?500 mbar. Using Student's t -test to compare the mean value of the pre- and post-storm data sets, we find no evidence to support the hypothesis that there is a statistically-significant correlation between the onset of a geomagnetic storm and changes in the isobaric temperature or height of the troposphere and lower stratosphere over the South Pole during winter months. This concurs with a similar study of the variability of the troposphere and lower stratosphere over the South Pole (Lam and Rodger, 2002) which uses drops in the level of observed galactic cosmic ray intensity, known as Forbush decreases, as a proxy for solar magnetic activity instead of geomagnetic storms.