Analysis of geomagnetic hourly ranges

In an attempt to develop better forecasts of geomagnetic activity, hourly ranges of geomagnetic data are analyzed with a focus on how the data are distributed. A lognormal distribution is found to be able to characterize the magnetic data for all observatories up to moderate disturbances with each d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSpace Weather Vol. 13; no. 8; p. 458
Main Authors Danskin, D W, Lotz, S I
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.08.2015
Subjects
Algorithms
Auroral electrojet
Electrojets
Equator
Extreme values
Geomagnetic activity
Geomagnetic data
Geomagnetism
Geophysics
Magnetic fields
Observatories
Power law
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Summary:In an attempt to develop better forecasts of geomagnetic activity, hourly ranges of geomagnetic data are analyzed with a focus on how the data are distributed. A lognormal distribution is found to be able to characterize the magnetic data for all observatories up to moderate disturbances with each distribution controlled by the mean of the logarithm of the hourly range. In the subauroral zone, the distribution deviates from the lognormal, which is interpreted as motion of the auroral electrojet toward the equator. For most observatories, a substantial deviation from the lognormal distribution was noted at the higher values and is best modeled with a power law extrapolation, which gives estimates of the extreme values that may occur at observatories which contribute to the disturbance storm time (Dst) index and in Canada. Key Points Lognormal distribution of geomagnetic hourly ranges for most values Mean of logarithm of hourly range characterizes the distribution Power law fit to distribution at largest values can estimate extreme values
ISSN:1539-4964
1542-7390
DOI:10.1002/2015SW001184