HR: 0830h
AN: SH51B-06    [Abstracts]
TI: The Joy of Searching, Assembling and Applying Eclectic Data Sets for Dating Pre-space Era Solar Proton Events
AU: * Shea, M A
EM: sssrc@msn.com
AF: Air Force Research Laboratory, VSBX, Emeritus, 29 Randolph Road, Hanscom AFB, Bedford, MA 01731 United States
AU: Smart, D F
EM: sssrc@msn.com
AF: Air Force Research Laboratory, VSBX, Emeritus, 29 Randolph Road, Hanscom AFB, Bedford, MA 01731 United States
AB: Scientific technology has advanced with lightening speed since the advent of routine space measurements in 1965. The miniaturization of spacecraft electronics, an advantage to experimenters, has challenged modelers to provide accurate assessments of the environment so that spacecraft equipment will continue to function throughout major solar-terrestrial perturbations. A question frequently asked is "How large can an event be?" The impulsive nitrate increases in polar ice cores provide a proxy for identifying major solar proton fluence events in the past. However, in order to date these impulsive nitrate events, records from a variety of geophysical phenomena are necessary. These include dates of major volcanic eruptions, large geomagnetic storms, and mid-latitude aurora. In addition a knowledge of the historic geomagnetic field is necessary simply to define "mid latitude". These data have been accumulated from many sources ranging from an assembly of aurora from the Korean Chronicles to identifying volcano eruptions listed on an IAVCEI calendar. An example of how these disparate records have been used to identify major solar proton fluence events over the past 400 years will be presented. These records have confirmed the date of a solar proton event with a greater than 30 MeV fluence four times the largest fluence event recorded in the space era.
DE: 7514 Energetic particles (2114)
DE: 9820 Techniques applicable in three or more fields
SC: SPA-Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly