The effects of atmospheric nonequilibrium in the generation of wave perturbations due to the solar radiation flux are studied. Equations of nonequilibrium thermodynamics are used to perform an...

Extreme solar events, such as powerful solar flares are accompanied by the release of strong solar disturbances, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The impact of CMEs on the Earth's magnetosphere causes geomagnetic storms, which trigger geomagnetic effects measurable in the ionosphere, upper atmosphere, and on and in the ground. During extreme cases, rapidly changing geomagnetic fields generate intense geomagnetically induced currents (GICs), which can cause dramatic effects on man‐made technological systems, including transmission lines and pipelines. In countries with large territories such as Kazakhstan, long power lines contribute to high values of induced currents during periods of extreme geoeffective solar events. It is of interest to estimate the values of GICs in an extensive network of power lines on the territory of Kazakhstan. However, there are no estimations of induced currents in power lines in Kazakhstan, and most estimation techniques are made difficult because of absence of field measurements of Earth conductivity. This study aims to model geoelectric fields on the surface of the Earth for Kazakhstan and to estimate the values of the GICs in 500 kV power lines. This study also compares between two methods for calculating induced voltages in power lines: one based on linear paths and the other based on curvilinear paths between substations of transmission power lines.

The large amount of data that are available for ionospheric studies using the GPS TEC method, as well as the need to take into account complex atmospheric dynamics, create certain difficulties in automating the process of searching and recognizing traveling ionospheric disturbances generated by different sources. To automate the process of detecting wave disturbances, numerical criteria for assessing the level of the wave disturbance signal were proposed. The signal-to-noise ratio calculated by the proposed method was used as one of such criteria. This work contains a description of the developed software system that implements the proposed methodology and allows the loading of RINEX files and processing, analyzing, and visualizing total electron content data.

The paper presents the results of a study of the behavior of ionospheric parameters of the total electron content, I(t), and electron density in the maximum F2 layer, Nm, over Almaty (Kazakhstan) [43.25° N; 76.92° E] in 1999–2013. The time interval under study covers different solar activity levels. We have shown that at F10.7>175 in summer and at F10.7>225 in winter there is a saturation effect, i.e. with increasing solar activity level values of I(t) do not increase. The observed nonlinear relationship between the total electron content of the ionosphere and the solar radiation flux F10.7 results from the nonlinear relationship between the solar ultraviolet radiation and the solar radiation flux. The study of the variability of the mid-latitude ionosphere parameters during different solar and geomagnetic activity levels has shown that the standard deviation ç(x) and average shift Xave of I(t) and Nm fluctuations relative to the quiet level weakly depend on solar activity, but greatly depend on geomagnetic activity when F10.7<100.

The estimation of geomagnetically induced currents that can affect the power grid system was conducted based on measurements from mid-latitude geomagnetic observatories in this study. To accomplish this, the grid line in the territory of Amaty oblast, Kazakhstan, was selected, and the geophysical conditions in the region were investigated. It was determined that due to geomagnetically active periods, Kazakhstan's energy systems affect by geomagnetically induced currents for a significant duration that depends on the geomagnetic storm value and time of its lasting, with the rate of geomagnetic field changes exceeding 17 nT/min. And the value of the geomagnetically induced currents can vary from fractions of mA to tens of mA.