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Abstract: Space weather refers to environmental conditions in the interplanetary space and Earth’s magnetosphere, ionosphere and exosphere and can influence the performance and reliability of electronics based technological systems. The major role in space weather changes plays the solar wind, a stream of charged particles (mostly electrons and protons) with energies of approximately 1 keV, that can cause geomagnetic storms and auroras. During their entry into the atmosphere, high energy cosmic rays collide with atomic nuclei of atmospheric gasses. When scattering occurs extensive air showers are created. Those cascades of secondary particles create flashes of light due to the Cherenkov effect as well as excite molecules of nitrogen gas in atmosphere, which then glow in fluorescent light. In order to observe the light created by air showers, it has to be collected with telescopes. The particles from the cascades that reach ground can be detected with surface detectors. The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest observatory for cosmic ray measurements. It is located in Argentinian pampas covering an area of 3000 km2. It consists of 1660 surface detectors and 27 fluorescence telescopes. For cosmic rays with energies above few 1017 eV, a precise reconstruction of energy and direction of primary particle is achievable. Observatory also allows measurement of flux of incoming particles down to primary energies in ca. 10 GeV - 10 TeV interval, with a median energy ca. 80-90 GeV. This measurement capability is called "scaler" mode, since the corresponding data consist of scaler counted cascade particles with deposited energy between 15 and 100 MeV, at the average rate of 2 kHz per individual surface detector. For the purpose of this master thesis I compared the data from scaler mode measurements with measurements of neutron monitors, which are commonly used for space weather observations. With the correlation received from the comparison, I showed that scaler mode operation of Pierre Auger observatory can be used to monitor space weather events such as solar cycle and the decreases in the observed galactic cosmic ray intensity due to solar wind (Forbush decrease).
Keywords: Pierre Auger Observatory, cosmic rays, space weather, Forbush decrease
Published in RUNG: 17.09.2019; Views: 6669; Downloads: 200
Full text (5,21 MB)

Abstract: Throughout the history human race depended on weather, so one of the priorities for its survival was to understand weather patterns and to be able to forecast weather. With the development of powerful computers, atmospheric numerical methods and precision instruments for atmospheric monitoring, it is possible to predict weather with greater accuracy and for a longer period of time ahead. At the same time, we are able to gain improved understanding of physical processes that occur in the atmosphere and represent one of most important features in our world. This diploma thesis focuses on the lowest part of the atmosphere - troposphere only, as all weather occurs in the troposphere. Weather is a complete collection of momentary thermodynamic states in the atmosphere and is defined with thermodynamic variables and relations between them. The goal of this thesis is development and presentation of a new way to determine the direction and speed of air mass movement, based on the combination of passive and active remote sensing techniques. A lidar is being used to determine the range to an object, in our case a cloud, that can be used as a tracer in the air current. Simultaneously with lidar ranging of clouds that same clouds are being visually monitored in a series of optical photographs. Selecting and following the temporal evolution of distinct cloud features and their range allows us to calculate the speed of clouds. The performance of this method was tested on four cases in Feb. and Mar. 2016. Measurements were performed in Ajdovščina in different weather conditions. Along with remote sensing (infra-red lidar and optical cameras), ground measurements of wind at Ajdovščina were performed. Wind speeds and directions obtained from remote sensing were compared to atmospheric sounding data from Ljubljana and Udine at similar heights and performed within as small as possible time window. In all four cases remote sensing results for wind speeds and directions agree relatively well with atmospheric sounding. Deviations are expected to be primarily due to spatial and temporal mismatch between sounding and remote sensing measurements. Another source of uncertainties are the limitations of the present remote sensing method in the determination of the actual direction of the wind, however, theses limitations could be eliminated in the future by using an all-sky camera and vertical lidar configuration.
Keywords: remote sensing, wind, atmosphere
Published in RUNG: 13.10.2016; Views: 9808; Downloads: 209
Full text (9,48 MB)