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Mysterious Space Weather Tracked in Africa

Irene Klotz, Discovery News

Photos

Strange Plumes

Nov. 15, 2007 -- Solar physicists meeting in Ethiopia this week are debating a weird, newly discovered space weather phenomenon that affects the accuracy of critical satellite navigation and airline communications systems.

Scientists have been monitoring plumes of electrified gas that reach so high up in the atmosphere that they escape into space. The plumes form after intense eruptions from the sun and emanate from Earth's ionosphere, the outermost layer of the atmosphere.

The ionosphere is filled with particles that have been stripped of electrons by ultraviolet radiation from the sun. This envelope of ionized gas, or plasma, can bend, distort, reflect and absorb radio waves. Plumes exacerbate the effects, impeding high and low frequency radio communications and delaying Global Positioning System navigation signals.

The phenomenon was discovered a few years ago by scientists trying to understand why GPS signals were altered following explosions of magnetized gas from the sun, storms known as coronal mass ejections.

For example, a stream of charged particles hitting Earth's atmosphere on Nov. 20, 2003, triggered a geomagnetic storm in the ionosphere, creating a plume of charged gas that rocketed from Florida to Canada at 2,200 mph.

Scientists looking for the plume's origin began focusing on the planet's geomagnetic equator, which happens to pass over the sub-Sahara.

"It's widely understood that Africa is key to the puzzle," said heliophysicist Madhulika Guhathakurta, with NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.