Monitoring of the Antarctic geomagnetic field and VLF variations for trends

The interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetic field creates a vast magnetic cavity within the solar wind flow, known as the magnetosphere. Through various solar wind-magnetosphere interactions, about one million megawatts of energy enters the magnetosphere to drive electrical currents, energize plasma, and produce complex and variable patterns of plasma convection. Since the ionosphere and magnetosphere are electrically coupled by the anisotropic behaviour of the plasma in the magnetospheric field, ground magnetic observations of ionospheric phenomena made at high latitudes have become a focus for a variety of investigations. On Earth's surface, the 'electromagnetic weather' which results as energy and momentum are transferred between the solar wind, magnetosphere, and ionosphere can be monitored using ground magnetometers.In a joint effort, IZMIRAN (Moscow, Russia, http://www.izmiran.rssi.ru/ ) and the Australian Antarctic Division (with the follow-on collaboration with the University of Michigan, http://mist.nianet.org/ ) deployed the digital quartz magnetometer and VLF data logging system at Davis in 1992 in the framework of the project 'Studies of the Southern polar cap boundary from magnetometer and very-low-frequency observations in Antarctica', sponsored by the Australian Antarctic Foundation. The collected data have been analysed and the results published in ANARE Research Notes 95 (1996).

太阳风与地球磁场的相互作用会在太阳风流中形成一个巨大的磁腔，即磁层（magnetosphere）。通过多种太阳风-磁层相互作用过程，约100万兆瓦的能量进入磁层，用以驱动电流、激发等离子体，并产生复杂多变的等离子体对流模式。由于电离层与磁层通过磁层等离子体的各向异性行为实现电耦合，在高纬度地区开展的地面电离层现象磁学观测，已成为各类研究的热点。在地球表面，太阳风、磁层与电离层之间发生能量与动量传递所引发的"电磁天气"，可通过地面磁力仪进行监测。俄罗斯科学院空间研究所（IZMIRAN，俄罗斯莫斯科，http://www.izmiran.rssi.ru/）与澳大利亚南极署（后续与密歇根大学合作，http://mist.nianet.org/）于1992年，在澳大利亚南极基金会资助的"基于南极磁力仪与甚低频（Very Low Frequency，VLF）观测研究南极极盖边界"项目框架下，在戴维斯站部署了数字石英磁力仪与甚低频数据记录系统。所采集的数据已完成分析，相关研究成果发表于《ANARE Research Notes》95期（1996年）。