Ionospheric responses over the Antarctic region to Intense Space Weather events: Plasma Convection vs. Auroral Precipitation

TL;DR

This study investigates how intense space weather events in 2023 affect the Antarctic ionosphere, focusing on plasma convection and auroral precipitation, and finds plasma convection has a stronger influence on TEC enhancements.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed correlation analysis between plasma convection, auroral precipitation, and TEC variations over Antarctica during geomagnetic storms in 2023.

Findings

TEC enhancements correlate more strongly with plasma convection (R ~ 0.88) than auroral precipitation (R ~ 0.31).

Plasma convection significantly influences diurnal TEC maximums during geomagnetic storms.

The study offers new insights into ionospheric responses in the under-explored south polar region.

Abstract

The present investigation is directed at exploring southern polar ionospheric responses to intense space weather events and their correlations with plasma convection and auroral precipitation. The main phases of six geomagnetic storms occurring in the year 2023 (ascending phase of the present solar cycle) are considered for this study. The ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC) measurements derived from GPS receivers covering the Antarctic region are used for probing the electron density perturbations during these events. Auroral precipitation maps are shown to illustrate the locations of the GPS stations relative to particle precipitation. SuperDARN maps are shown to understand the effects of plasma convection over these locations. Correlation between the enhanced TEC observations with the auroral precipitation (R $\sim$ 0.31) and the plasma convection (R $\sim$ 0.88) reveals that the latter is more responsible for causing significant enhancements in the diurnal maximum values of TEC over the Antarctic region in comparison to the former. Therefore, this work shows correlation studies between two physical processes and ionospheric density enhancements over the under-explored south polar region under strong levels of geomagnetic activity during 2023.