Effects of geomagnetic storms on the middle atmosphere and troposphere by ground-based GPS observations

Among Solar activities’ events, the geomagnetic storms are believed to cause the largest atmospheric effects. The geomagnetic storm is a complex process of solar wind/magnetospheric origin. It is well known to affect severely on the ionosphere. However, this effect of this complex process will maybe act at various altitudes in the atmosphere, even including the lower layer and the neutral middle atmosphere, particularly the stratosphere. Nowadays, t he GPS-derived ZTD (zenith tropospheric delay) can be transformed into the precipitable water vapor (PWV) through a function relation, and further has been widely used in meteorology, especially in improving the precision of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models. However, such geomagnetic effects on the atmosphere are ignored in GPS meteorology applications. In this paper, we will investigate the geomagnetic storms’ effects on the middle atmosphere and troposphere (0-100km) by GPS observations and other data. It has found that geomagnetic storms’effect on the atmosphere also appears in the troposphere, but the mechanism to interpret correlations in the troposphere need be further studied.