Datensatz

Zusammenfassung

Energetic charged particles – protons, electrons and heavier ions with energies from tens of keV to hundreds of MeV – precipitate into the atmosphere at high latitudes, guided by the Earth’s magnetic field. They originate from the sun, accelerated in the solar corona during flares or coronal mass ejection events, or from the terrestrial magnetosphere, accelerated during geomagnetic storms or auroral substorms by variations in the high-speed solar wind. In the atmosphere, they interact with the most abundant species by collision reactions, starting a chain of chemical-dynamical coupling mechanism leading from chemical changes in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere via stratospheric ozone loss to radiative feedback, possibly even affecting tropospheric weather systems in the high-latitude winter. In this talk, an overview of the state of the art will be provided, and some open issues will be highlighted.