ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Space Physics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2025.1610276
Localized Geomagnetic Disturbances: A Statistical Analysis of Spatial Scale
Provisionally accepted
Raman Mukundan1,2*
Amy Keesee1,2
Jose Paulo Marchezi1,2
Victor Pinto3,4
Michael Coughlan1,2
Donald Hampton5- 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Hampshire, Durham, United States
- 2Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, United States
- 3Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Santiago, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
- 4Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Astrophysics and Space Sciences, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile
- 5Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) pose a significant space weather hazard, driven by geomagnetic field variation due to the coupling of the solar wind to the magnetosphereionosphere system. Extensive research has been dedicated to understanding ground-level geomagnetic field perturbations as a GIC proxy. Still, the non-uniform aspect of geomagnetic fluctuations make it difficult to fully characterize the ground-level magnetic field across large regions of the globe. Here, we focus on localized geomagnetic disturbances (LGMDs) in the North American region and specify the degree to which these disturbances are localized. Employing the electrodynamics-informed Spherical Elementary Current Systems (SECS) method, we spatially interpolate magnetic field perturbations between ground-based magnetometer stations in the North American region. In this way, we represent the ground magnetic field as a series of heatmaps at high temporal and spatial resolution. We leverage heatmaps from storm time during solar cycle 24 to automatically identify LGMDs. We build a statistical picture of the frequency with which LGMDs occur, their scale sizes, and their latitude-longitude aspect ratios. Additionally, we use an information theory approach to quantify the dependence of these three attributes on the phase of the solar cycle. We find no clear influence of the solar cycle on any of the three attributes. We offer some avenues toward explaining why LGMDs might behave broadly the same whether they arise during solar maximum or solar minimum.
Keywords: Space weather, Geomagnetically induced currents, localized geomagnetic disturbance, ground based magnetometer, Spherical elementary current systems
Received: 11 Apr 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mukundan, Keesee, Marchezi, Pinto, Coughlan and Hampton. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Raman Mukundan, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Hampshire, Durham, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.