Computation of ion production rate and short, mid and long term ionization effect by cosmic rays during Bastille day event

TL;DR

This paper models the ionization effects caused by cosmic rays during the Bastille Day solar event, analyzing short, mid, and long-term impacts on Earth's atmosphere using advanced Monte Carlo simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive 3-D Monte Carlo model to quantify cosmic ray-induced ionization during a major solar event, considering both galactic and solar cosmic rays.

Findings

Enhanced ionization over polar caps during the event

Altitude-dependent ion production rates computed

Assessment of short, mid, and long-term ionization effects

Abstract

The galactic cosmic rays are the main source of ionization in the Earth stratosphere and troposphere. The induced by primary cosmic ray particles ionization is important in various processes related to atmospheric physics and chemistry, specifically the minor constituents. The ion production in the atmosphere is enhanced compared to the average following major solar energetic particles events, specifically over the polar caps. During the solar cycle 23 we observed several strong ground level enhancements, one of the strongest among them been the Bastille day event on 14 July 2000. In the work presented here we apply a full Monte Carlo 3-D model in order to compute the cosmic ray induced ionization. The model is based on atmospheric shower simulation with the PLANETOCOSMICS code and the ion production rate is considered as a superposition of cosmic rays with galactic and solar origin. The ion production rate is computed as a function of the altitude above the sea level and the short, mid and long term ionization effect relative to the average due to galactic cosmic rays is computed.