(November 2, 2015) New
research led by physicists at the University of Warwick has used tools designed
to study social networks to gain significant new insights into the Northern
Lights, and space weather – particularly the interaction of events in the sun’s
atmosphere with Earth’s ionosphere.
The research team used data from over 100 individual
magnetometers located at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere. These
magnetometers have been used for decades to track space weather but it is only
recently that the data from all these devices has been collected in one place
in the SuperMAG project.
University of Warwick researcher Professor Sandra Chapman,
one of the lead researchers, on the paper said:
“The new SuperMAG data collection opened up the possibility
of finding patterns of correlation between each pair of all of the
magnetometers, and studying how this changes in time. We found ways of
overcoming the challenges of the irregular distribution of the magnetometers
and the different conditions at each site but what we were most excited about
was our idea of trying to apply techniques normally used to study social
networks of people to this network of magnetometers.”
Professor Jesper W. Gjerloev of SuperMAG (and Bergen and
Johns Hopkins Universities) said:
‘This analysis really shows what can be done when data from
different international observatories can be brought together in one place,
which is what superMAG is all about. The data has been ‘out there’ for decades
but only now it has been brought together we can perform analyses like this one
to see the detailed patterns in how space weather maps out on the ground’
“This analysis showed very few connections in the network
before the onset of substorms that lead to auroras such as the Northern Lights.
The network exhibited a clear increase in connectivity at the onset of
substorms with high-latitude connections predominating though there were also
low and cross latitudinal connections present. As the ionosphere recovered from
the substorms there is a switch from a high-latitude-dominated connection
structure to a low-latitude-dominated one.”