Disturbances in Atmospheric Electric Field and Collocated Geophysical Parameters Recorded by the MVP‐LAI System During the May 2024 Great Geomagnetic Storm
Yang‐Yi Sun, Chieh‐Hung Chen, Yongxin Gao, Zhiqiang Mao, Jin Wang, Shuang Luo, Sheng Li, Gilbert Pi, Xuemin Zhang, Jing Liu, Tao Chen, Li‐Ching Lin, Chi‐Yen Lin, Pengyu Zhang, Jian Zhang, Tianya Luo, Kai LinAbstract
Our Earth experienced an extreme solar storm on the Mother's Day weekend from 10–12 May 2024, leading to the most severe geomagnetic storm in the past two decades. In addition to significant changes in the near‐Earth space environment from the magnetosphere to the ionosphere, this study primarily shows notable disturbances in the atmospheric electric field ( Ez ), as recorded by the electric field mill of the MVP‐LAI (Monitoring Vibrations and Perturbations in the Lithosphere, Atmosphere, and Ionosphere) system located in LeShan (29.6°N, 103.9°E; L‐shell value ∼1.12), Sichuan Province, during the initial and main phases of the storm. Here, we employed a data‐adaptive method to identify storm characteristics by resolving complex changes in atmospheric Ez over short to long periods. For further investigating causal mechanisms, we also analyzed the collocated measurements of the MVP‐LAI system, including atmospheric pressure, geomagnetic fields, ionospheric total electron content (TEC), and High‐frequency Doppler echoes over LeShan, as well as the ionosonde echoes at DaoFu (31.0°N, 101.12°E) and the magnetic field observation from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) 16 at ∼6.6 Earth radii. The key finding is the nearly coincident disturbances from space to the atmospheric Ez at ∼20:00 UT, which indicated the possible impact of electrodynamic changes on the atmosphere at the time of storm onset. Short‐period perturbations (with frequency >1 mHz) observed in the ionospheric TEC, atmospheric pressure and electric field suggest the appearance of acoustic resonance in the atmosphere during the storm's main phase.