Equipment to monitor magnetic storms will be installed on Adak Island in the Aleutians this summer.  The 40-antenna radar array will help scientists understand the interaction between the Earth’s upper atmosphere and space. Here’s University of Alaska Fairbanks electrical engineering professor Bill Bristow.

“The weather radars you’re used to seeing look at the troposphere, the lower portion of the atmosphere, and map out the large scale patterns, like when you see a hurricane it has that large vortex pattern you see on the screen.  We’re looking at similar patterns in the upper atmosphere, although they’re due to a very different source.”

Bristow says the installation on Adak will be part of a network of eight arrays stretching from the North Atlantic all the way to the North Pacific.  All of the sites are in the mid-latitudes, which he says allows for researchers to monitor the extent and effects of large magnetic storms.

“Whenever you have a satellite communication or a signal that goes from the ground – and that includes things like the GPS system and communications, even space based radar systems looking at the ground – whenever you have a large magnetic storm, the ionosphere, the upper atmosphere, can cause degradation of these services.”

The 15-acre array on Adak is expected to cost $400,000 and should be completed by late summer.  The project is currently out to bid.