New chains of space weather monitoring stations in China

摘要

To develop an understanding of near-Earth space's response to solar activities and to eventually enhance the success of space weather predictions, it is crucial to make synergetic observations of the entire environment from the Sun to the Earth as a system. Since the beginning of the space era, direct observations by satellites have become a much needed means toward this end. However, ground-based observations also have advantages and serve as a counterpart to those made in space. For example, instruments on the ground are much less expensive and easier to repair than those on satellites. Ground-based observations provide continuous high-resolution data not subject to the limitation of the downlink data rate from satellites to ground receiving stations. Also, because some observations have been made from Earth for hundreds of years, society has long and continuous records of quantities such as geomagnetic field variations, measurements of relative ionospheric opacity, and sunspot observations. Data from spacecraft, on the other hand, go back only a few decades.