TY - JOUR
T1 - Heliophysics and amateur radio
T2 - citizen science collaborations for atmospheric, ionospheric, and space physics research and operations
AU - Frissell, Nathaniel A.
AU - Ackermann, John R.
AU - Alexander, Jesse N.
AU - Benedict, Robert L.
AU - Blackwell, William C.
AU - Boedicker, Rachel K.
AU - Cerwin, Stephen A.
AU - Collins, Kristina V.
AU - Cowling, Scott H.
AU - Deacon, Chris
AU - Diehl, Devin M.
AU - Di Mare, Francesca
AU - Duffy, Timothy J.
AU - Edson, Laura Brandt
AU - Engelke, William D.
AU - Farmer, James O.
AU - Frissell, Rachel M.
AU - Gerzoff, Robert B.
AU - Gibbons, John
AU - Griffiths, Gwyn
AU - Holm, Sverre
AU - Howell, Frank M.
AU - Kaeppler, Stephen R.
AU - Kavanagh, George
AU - Kazdan, David
AU - Kim, Hyomin
AU - Larsen, David R.
AU - Ledvina, Vincent E.
AU - Liles, William
AU - Lo, Sam
AU - Lombardi, Michael A.
AU - MacDonald, Elizabeth A.
AU - Madey, Julius
AU - McDermott, Thomas C.
AU - McGaw, David G.
AU - McGwier, Robert W.
AU - Mikitin, Gary A.
AU - Miller, Ethan S.
AU - Mitchell, Cathryn
AU - Montare, Aidan
AU - Nguyen, Cuong D.
AU - Nordberg, Peter N.
AU - Perry, Gareth W.
AU - Piccini, Gerard N.
AU - Pozerski, Stanley W.
AU - Reif, Robert H.
AU - Rizzo, Jonathan D.
AU - Robinett, Robert S.
AU - Romanek, Veronica I.
AU - Sami, Simal
AU - Sanchez, Diego F.
AU - Sarwar, Muhammad Shaaf
AU - Schwartz, Jay A.
AU - Serra, H. Lawrence
AU - Silver, H. Ward
AU - Skov, Tamitha Mulligan
AU - Swartz, David A.
AU - Themens, David R.
AU - Tholley, Francis H.
AU - West, Mary Lou
AU - Wilcox, Ronald C.
AU - Witten, David
AU - Witvliet, Ben A.
AU - Yadav, Nisha
N1 - Funding
NAF acknowledges the generous support of NSF Grants AGS-2045755, AGS-2002278, AGS-1932997, AGS-1932972, AGS-2230345 and AGS-2230346, NASA Grants 80NSSC23K1322 and 80NSSC21K1772 and Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC). VEF is supported by NSF Graduate Research Fellowship grant 2235201. KVC is supported by NSF grant ANT-2218996. BAW was funded by INFRAIA-02-2020, grant number 101007599, as part of the project “Plasmasphere Ionosphere Thermosphere Integrated Research Environment and Access services: A Network of Research Facilities (PITHIA-NRF),” (https://www.pithia-nrf.eu/). The Ham Radio Project (JNA/NRAO) is supported through a generous grant from ARDC. We also thank the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) for donating license manuals and other learning materials and acknowledge the Tuscon Amateur Packet Radio and the Young Amateurs Radio Club for their administrative and technical support.
PY - 2023/11/16
Y1 - 2023/11/16
N2 - The amateur radio community is a global, highly engaged, and technical community with an intense interest in space weather, its underlying physics, and how it impacts radio communications. The large-scale observational capabilities of distributed instrumentation fielded by amateur radio operators and radio science enthusiasts offers a tremendous opportunity to advance the fields of heliophysics, radio science, and space weather. Well-established amateur radio networks like the RBN, WSPRNet, and PSKReporter already provide rich, ever-growing, long-term data of bottomside ionospheric observations. Up-and-coming purpose-built citizen science networks, and their associated novel instruments, offer opportunities for citizen scientists, professional researchers, and industry to field networks for specific science questions and operational needs. Here, we discuss the scientific and technical capabilities of the global amateur radio community, review methods of collaboration between the amateur radio and professional scientific community, and review recent peer-reviewed studies that have made use of amateur radio data and methods. Finally, we present recommendations submitted to the U.S. National Academy of Science Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024–2033 for using amateur radio to further advance heliophysics and for fostering deeper collaborations between the professional science and amateur radio communities. Technical recommendations include increasing support for distributed instrumentation fielded by amateur radio operators and citizen scientists, developing novel transmissions of RF signals that can be used in citizen science experiments, developing new amateur radio modes that simultaneously allow for communications and ionospheric sounding, and formally incorporating the amateur radio community and its observational assets into the Space Weather R2O2R framework. Collaborative recommendations include allocating resources for amateur radio citizen science research projects and activities, developing amateur radio research and educational activities in collaboration with leading organizations within the amateur radio community, facilitating communication and collegiality between professional researchers and amateurs, ensuring that proposed projects are of a mutual benefit to both the professional research and amateur radio communities, and working towards diverse, equitable, and inclusive communities.
AB - The amateur radio community is a global, highly engaged, and technical community with an intense interest in space weather, its underlying physics, and how it impacts radio communications. The large-scale observational capabilities of distributed instrumentation fielded by amateur radio operators and radio science enthusiasts offers a tremendous opportunity to advance the fields of heliophysics, radio science, and space weather. Well-established amateur radio networks like the RBN, WSPRNet, and PSKReporter already provide rich, ever-growing, long-term data of bottomside ionospheric observations. Up-and-coming purpose-built citizen science networks, and their associated novel instruments, offer opportunities for citizen scientists, professional researchers, and industry to field networks for specific science questions and operational needs. Here, we discuss the scientific and technical capabilities of the global amateur radio community, review methods of collaboration between the amateur radio and professional scientific community, and review recent peer-reviewed studies that have made use of amateur radio data and methods. Finally, we present recommendations submitted to the U.S. National Academy of Science Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics) 2024–2033 for using amateur radio to further advance heliophysics and for fostering deeper collaborations between the professional science and amateur radio communities. Technical recommendations include increasing support for distributed instrumentation fielded by amateur radio operators and citizen scientists, developing novel transmissions of RF signals that can be used in citizen science experiments, developing new amateur radio modes that simultaneously allow for communications and ionospheric sounding, and formally incorporating the amateur radio community and its observational assets into the Space Weather R2O2R framework. Collaborative recommendations include allocating resources for amateur radio citizen science research projects and activities, developing amateur radio research and educational activities in collaboration with leading organizations within the amateur radio community, facilitating communication and collegiality between professional researchers and amateurs, ensuring that proposed projects are of a mutual benefit to both the professional research and amateur radio communities, and working towards diverse, equitable, and inclusive communities.
KW - space weather
KW - amateur radio
KW - ham radio
KW - HamSCI
KW - citizen science
KW - ionosphere
KW - heliophysics
U2 - 10.3389/fspas.2023.1184171
DO - 10.3389/fspas.2023.1184171
M3 - Review article
SN - 2296-987X
VL - 10
JO - Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences
JF - Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences
M1 - 1184171
ER -