Weather reacting to geomagnetic storms Original Research Article

In the first 15 years of the Space Age satellite position measurements derived from visual and photographic observations helped to determine the decay rate of satellites, by means of which the first models of the upper-atmosphere have been calculated. Our group concentrated on the study of the geomagnetic effect and collected several ten thousand observations from Europe and from Asia before and after geomagnetic storms. It was already conspicuous during data gathering that there are considerably less satellite observations in the time periods following almost every geomagnetic storm than in the preceding ones – indicating that the cloudiness might increase considerably after geomagnetic storms. The paper presents the statistical treatment of this phenomenon.