Ionosphere Electricity Interfering Satellite Signals Works Like a Dynamo

Using observations from NASA’s The Ionospheric Connection Explorer (Icon) mission, scientists presented the first direct measurements of a long-theorized dynamo on Earth at the edge of space. A wind-driven electric generator that spans the earth more than 60 miles across or 96.5 km.
The dynamo revolves in the ionosphere, the electrically charged boundary between Earth and outer space. This is powered by tidal winds in the upper atmosphere that are faster than most storms and rise from the lower atmosphere, creating an electrical environment that can affect satellites and technology on earth.
New work, published today in Nature Geoscience, improves understanding of the ionosphere better. The information obtained helps scientists better predict space weather and protects technology on Earth from its effects.
Launched in 2019, Icon, is on a mission to decipher how Earth’s weather interacts with weather in space. Radio and GPS signals penetrate the ionosphere, which is home to auroras and the International Space Station (ISS). Dense clumps of electrically charged particles can interfere with this signal.
Scientists studying the atmosphere and space weather have long used the Earth dynamo model to have a similar effect. But with so little information, they have to make some assumptions about how it works.
From the results of concrete observations by Icon of the wind that triggers the dynamo, which affects space weather. They say angina is the key in predicting what will happen. “Icon’s first year in space shows these winds are key to improving our ability to predict what happens in the ionosphere,” said Icon’s lead researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the new study, Thomas Immel.
He said the ionosphere is like a sea of ​​electrically charged particles, created by the sun and mixed with the neutral upper atmosphere. Sandwiched between earth and space, the ionosphere responds to changes from both the sun above and the earth below.
How much influence comes from each party is what makes researchers interested in finding out. Studying Icon’s data for a year, the researchers found many of the changes they observed came from the lower atmosphere.
Generators work by repeatedly moving an electric-carrying conductor such as a copper wire through a magnetic field. Filled with an electrically charged gas called plasma, the ionosphere acts like a wire, or rather a tangled wire through which electricity flows through it.
Like the dynamo in Earth’s core, the dynamo in the atmosphere generates electromagnetic fields from the movement of strong winds in the thermosphere, the layer of the upper atmosphere known for its high temperature, pushing current-carrying plasma in the ionosphere across invisible magnetic field lines that circle the earth like an onion.
Wind tends to push larger positively charged particles than small negatively charged electrons. “You get the plus moving differently than the minus,” explains co-author Brian Harding, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s an electric current,” he continued.
In most electric generators, these components are tightly bonded so that they stay in place and work in a predictable manner. But the ionosphere is free to move as it pleases. “The current generates its own magnetic field, which opposes the Earth’s magnetic field as it passes through it,” Immel said. “So you end up with wires trying to get away from you. It’s a messy generator,” he said.
Following the whims of the ionosphere is key to predicting potential space weather impacts. Depending on which direction the wind is blowing, the plasma in the ionosphere shoots out into space or falls to earth. This behavior results from the tug of war between the ionosphere and the Earth’s electromagnetic field.
The dynamo, located at the lower end of the ionosphere, has long been a mystery because it is difficult to observe. This is because the position is too high for a scientific balloon and too low for a satellite, making it difficult for research equipment to study it.
However, Icon is uniquely equipped to probe this part of the ionosphere from above by utilizing the natural emission of the upper atmosphere to detect plasma motion. The mission simultaneously observes strong winds and migrating plasma.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to find out how much wind contributes to the behavior of the ionosphere, without any assumptions,” said Astrid Maute, co-author of another study and Icon scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
It was only in the last decade or so, Immel said, that scientists realized how varied the rising winds can be. “The upper atmosphere is not expected to change rapidly,” he said. “But it is, day by day. We find this is all due to changes driven from the lower atmosphere,” he said. hi