E. Blanch

Milestones of the IAGA International Service of Rapid Magnetic Variations and its contribution to geomagnetic field knowledge

The Service of Rapid Magnetic Variations (RMV) was created by the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA) with the aim of obtaining an overall view of the temporal and spatial distribution of RMV as a base for further study of these phenomena. The Ebro Observatory participated in the creation of this service and has been administering it from the beginning; consequently, the histories of these two organizations are intertwined.

Pilot Ionosonde Network for Identification of Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances

Travelling Ionospheric Disturbances (TIDs) are the ionospheric signatures of atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs). Their identification and tracking is important because the TIDs affect all services that rely on predictable ionospheric radio wave propagation. Although various techniques have been proposed to measure TID characteristics, their real-time implementation still has several difficulties. In this contribution, we present a new technique, based on the analysis of oblique Digisonde-to-Digisonde (D2D) “skymap” observations, to directly identify TIDs and specify the TID wave parameters based on the measurement of angle-of-arrival, Doppler frequency, and time-of-flight of ionospherically reflected high-frequency (HF) radio pulses. The technique has been implemented for the first time for the Net-TIDE project with data streaming from the network of European Digisonde DPS4D observatories. The performance is demonstrated during a period of moderate auroral activity, assessing its consistency with independent measurements such as data from auroral magnetometers and electron density perturbations from Digisondes and GNSS stations. Given that the different types of measurements used for this assessment were not made at exactly the same time and location, and that there was insufficient coverage in the area between the AGW sources and the measurement locations, we can only consider our interpretation as plausible and indicative for the reliability of the extracted TID characteristics. In the framework of the new TechTIDE project (European Commission H2020), a retrospective analysis of the Net-TIDE results in comparison with those extracted from GNSS TEC-based methodologies is currently being attempted, and the results will be the objective of a follow up paper.

Improved modelling of ionospheric disturbances for remote sensing and navigation

A generic software tool to evaluate the impact of ionospheric disturbances is presented, including low and high latitude physically-based models, and low and high frequency fluctuations. This tool has been developed specifically to assess the performance of navigation receivers, but it is ready to simulate other frequencies and even receivers in dynamic conditions, which allows it to be used in other applications such as communications, GNSS-R, radar altimetry or SAR.

Detection of Nocturnal and Daylight Bolides from Ebre Observatory in the Framework of the SPMN Fireball Network

Bright daylight fireballs are rarely studied due to the lack of data, and the difficulty to calibrate the trajectory descriptions given by eyewitnesses. Only in few occasions casual recordings have been able to get orbital information of daylight bolides. Fortunately, modern video detectors can be also adapted for monitoring the sky during broad daylight and we present here some first results. In 2006 we started a continuous monitoring of large bolides over Catalonia during the night with the goal of recording meteorite-dropping bolides and recover new meteorites. Multiple station fireball monitoring in broad daylight was extended during early 2014. With such a goal we installed a new meteor video-detection station at the Ebre Observatory (URL-CSIC) to be complementary with the IEEC-CSIC stations operational at Montseny and Folgueroles, part of the Spanish Meteor and fireball Network (SPMN) initiative. The strategic location of this station will allow recording bolides during daytime over the Spanish north-east sky, and particularly over Catalonia. Just as an example of the station capabilities, here we describe two relevant bolides recorded using a new color video camera during the first year of continuous operation: a bright South Taurid bolide appeared on Nov. 6, 2015 and a daylight bolide SPMN100215 disrupted over Catalonia on Feb. 10, 2015.

Multi-instrumental observations of the 2014 Ursid meteor outburst

This study was supported by the Spanish grants AYA2011- 26522 and AYA2015-67175-P (PI: JMTR), AYA2015-68646-P and AYA2014-61357-EXP (JMM). The FRIPON project is funded by ANR. MG acknowledges support from the ERC Advanced Grant No. 320773, and the Russian Foundation for BasicResearch, project nos. 16-07-01072 and 16-05-00004. Research at the Ural Federal University is supported by the Act 211 of the Government of the Russian Federation, agreement No 02.A03.21.0006. EB is supported by the Universitat Ramon Llull project 2016-URL-IR-001supported by ‘Generalitat de Catalunya’. The authors acknowledge being a part of the network supported by the COST Action TD1403 ‘Big Data Era in Sky and EarthObservation’. The CINES supercomputer was used for theoretical work. This research has been made in the framework of EURONEAR. We thank Dr Aswin Sekhar for his valuable comments that helped to enhance this paper. This study was done in the frame of a PhD on Physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) under the direction of Dr. Josep M. Trigo-Rodr´iguez and Dr. Maria Gritsevich.