Observations of the atmospheric electric field at Syowa Station, Antarctica
Yasuhiro MINAMOTO
Abstract
At Syowa Station, located on East Ongul Island near the continent of Antarctica, an electric field mill has been making observations of and collecting dataon the atmospheric electric field. The author studied short-period disturbances in the data from February 2005 to January 2006 in order to eliminate local disturbances.
Spectra of the atmospheric electric field one-second value by Fast Fourier Transform show highly significant reduction at periods longer than 20 seconds.
The author used the 61-second running mean value of the atmospheric electricfield, and calculated the standard deviation value forthe same 61 seconds. Comparing these values with 1-minute values of wind speed, in some case during blizzards, negative values of the atmospheric electric field or the significantly small standard deviation of the atmospheric electric field are observed. However, to monitor the global circuits, these time periods should be not used. Except for these time periods, positive correlations have been obtained between the 61-second running mean value of the atmospheric electric field and wind speed. On the other hand, correlations between the standard deviation of the atmospheric electric field for 61 seconds and wind speed are small.
Received 29 November 2007; received in revised form 16 January 2008; accepted 23 January 2008
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