Development of a low-cost magnetometer system for a coordinated space weather monitoring

In addition to auroral observations, magnetic field measurements are one of the traditional ground-based methods for observing space weather phenomena. For this purpose, magnetic sensors, known as magnetometers, are widely used in space research. Ground-based magnetometers provide critical information on how solar activity impacts the Earth’s magnetosphere and the ionosphere. In particular, geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) due to temporal changes in the magnetic field (dB/dt), are a major concern in space weather studies. As part of the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) Personal Space Weather Station (PSWS) project, a low-cost, commercial off-the-shelf magnetometer has been developed to provide quantitative and qualitative measurements of the geospace environment from the ground for both scientific and operational purposes at a cost that will allow for crowd-sourced data contributions. The PSWS magnetometers employ a magneto-inductive sensor technology to record three-axis magnetic field variations with a field resolution of approximately 3 nT at a sampling rate of 1 Hz. Data from the PSWS network will combine these magnetometer measurements with high frequency (HF, 3–30 MHz) radio observations to monitor large-scale current systems and ionospheric disturbances due to drivers from both space and the atmosphere. Once established, a densely spaced magnetometer array will demonstrate space weather monitoring capabilities over an unprecedented spatial extent. Magnetic field data collected by PSWS magnetometers installed at various locations across the United States are presented and compared with data from nearby existing magnetometers, demonstrating that the PSWS instruments provide performance that is well suited for scientific investigations.