Attenuation of decameter sky noise during x-ray solar flares in 2013-2017 based on the observations at midlatitude radars

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that decameter sky noise measurements at midlatitude radars can effectively diagnose ionospheric absorption effects during x-ray solar flares, showing a strong anticorrelation with flare intensity.

Contribution

It introduces a method to use sky noise data from multiple radars to analyze ionospheric effects of solar flares, revealing consistent attenuation patterns during flares.

Findings

88.3% of cases show noise attenuation during solar flares

Strong anticorrelation (Pearson > -0.5) in 33% of daytime cases

Median regression coefficient of -4.4×10^4 dB·m^2/Wt

Abstract

Based on a joint analysis of the data from 10 midlatitude decameter radars the effects are investigated during 80 x-ray flares in the period 2013-2017. For the investigation nine mid-latitude SuperDARN radars of the northern hemisphere and Ekaterinburg coherent decameter radar of ISTP SB RAS are used. All the radars work in the same 8-20MHz frequency band and have similar hardware and software. During the analysis the temporal dynamics of noise from each of the radar direction and for each flare is investigated separately. As a result, on the basis of about 13000 daily measurements we found a strong anticorrelation between noise power and x-ray flare intensity, that allows to use short-wave sky noise to diagnose the ionospheric effects of x-ray solar flares. It is shown that in 88.3\% of cases an attenuation of daytime decameter radio noise is observed during solar flare, correlating with the temporal dynamics of the solar flare. The intensity of decameter noise anticorrelates well (the Pearson correlation coefficient better than -0.5) with the shape of the X-ray flare in the daytime (for solar elevation angle $>0$) in 33\% of cases, the average Pearson correlation over the daytime is about -0.34. Median regression coefficient between GOES 0.1-0.8nm x-ray intensity and daytime sky-noise attenuation is about $-4.4\cdot10^{4}\ [dB\cdot m^{2}/Wt]$. Thus, it has been shown that measurements of the decameter sky noise level at midlatitude decameter radars can be used to study the ionospheric absorption of high-frequency waves in the lower ionosphere during x-ray solar flares. This can be explained by the assumption that the most part of decameter sky noise detected by the radars can be interpreted as produced by ground sources at distances of the first propagation hop (\textasciitilde{} 3000 km).