Crowdsourced Detection of Solar-Driven Ionospheric Disturbances Using Amateur Radio Weak-Signal Networks

Solar flares and related space-weather phenomena produce rapid, measurable changes in Earth’s ionosphere that directly impact high-frequency (HF) radio propagation. While satellite-based observatories monitor solar emissions, Earth-side detection of ionospheric disturbances remains spatially limited. This paper proposes and demonstrates a crowdsourced sensing approach using global amateur radio weak-signal networks—specifically WSPR and FT8—to detect and characterize ionospheric anomalies associated with solar flares and sudden ionospheric disturbances (SIDs). By correlating synchronized signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) degradation, Doppler drift, and path-dependent absorption across thousands of amateur radio links, the W2TAP system provides near-real-time detection of solar-induced HF disruption, offering earlier localized awareness than traditional geomagnetic indices.