Date of Award:

12-2008

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Physics

Committee Chair(s)

Jan J. Sojka

Committee

Jan J. Sojka

Committee

Lie Zhu

Committee

Robert W. Schunk

Committee

Randy J. Jost

Committee

James T. Wheeler

Abstract

Solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation ionizes the neutral components in the atmosphere, which is partly responsible for the formation of the ionosphere, and contributes to heating of the atmosphere. Solar flares change the solar spectrum at times by several orders of magnitude. These changes modify the Earth's upper atmosphere, causing problems to communication systems and space operations, such as increased satellite drag. Unfortunately, solar UV measurements are limited since they can only be observed with space-based sensors. In order to work around this limitation, the solar radio emissions at a wavelength of 10.7 cm have been used as a proxy for the solar UV radiation. These measurements, known as the F10.7 index, are a snapshot of the solar activity at the time they are taken and do not capture the changes that occur throughout the day, such as flares. In order to capture this daily variation, we used 1-second cadence solar radio data and compared it to solar UV measurements taken once per orbit by the TIMED satellite. We found significant correlations between some radio frequencies and different UV wavelengths during quiet times. These correlations changed in terms of radio frequency and UV wavelength during solar flares.

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Comments

This work was revised and made publicly available electronically on July 18, 2011

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