Issue |
J. Space Weather Space Clim.
Volume 8, 2018
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A46 | |
Number of page(s) | 11 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/swsc/2018032 | |
Published online | 22 October 2018 |
Research Article
Neutron monitor count rate increase as a proxy for dose rate assessment at aviation altitudes during GLEs
1
Space Climate Research Unit, University of Oulu, 90570
Oulu, Finland
2
Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory, University of Oulu, 90570
Oulu, Finland
3
Faculty of Science, University of Oulu, 90570
Oulu, Finland
* Corresponding author: alex_mishev@yahoo.com
Received:
14
December
2017
Accepted:
13
August
2018
Radiation exposure due to cosmic rays, specifically at cruising aviation altitudes, is an important topic in the field of space weather. While the effect of galactic cosmic rays can be easily assessed on the basis of recent models, estimate of the dose rate during strong solar particle events is rather complicated and time consuming. Here we compute the maximum effective dose rates at a typical commercial flight altitude of 35 kft (≈11 000 m above sea level) during ground level enhancement events, where the necessary information, namely derived energy/rigidity spectra of solar energetic particles, is available. The computations are carried out using different reconstructions of the solar proton spectra, available in bibliographic sources, leading to multiple results for some events. The computations were performed employing a recent model for effective dose and/or ambient dose equivalent due to cosmic ray particles. A conservative approach for the computation was assumed. A highly significant correlation between the maximum effective dose rate and peak NM count rate increase during ground level enhancement events is derived. Hence, we propose to use the peak NM count rate increase as a proxy in order to assess the peak effective dose rate at flight altitude during strong solar particle events using the real time records of the worldwide global neutron monitor network.
Key words: Solar energetic particles / GLE events / Neutron monitor network / Radiation environment
© A. Mishev et al., Published by EDP Sciences 2018
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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