Towards the Opening of a Magnetic Observatory at Dome C (Antarctica)

Abstract

The opening of a new magnetic observatory is one of the activities aimed at by the creation of a scientific base at DomeC, Antarctica (lat. 75° 06’S, long. 123° 21’E, elev. 3200m). There are many reasons supporting this objective: all Antarctic magnetic observatories providing absolute values are located along the shore and are therefore subject to coast effects and crustal field contamination. DomeC and Vostok will be so far the sole observatories free from these effects. On one hand, high latitude absolute observatories are very useful to global or regional modeling based upon satellite data, because, at high latitudes, only total field measurements can be used due to the strong influence of field aligned currents. On the other hand, the availability of magnetic data from the well distributed observatories of Terra Nova Bay (TNB), Scott Base (SBA), Dumont d’Urville (DRV), Casey (CSY) and Vostok (VOS) will provide strong support to auroral and polar cap ionosphere studies as well as asymmetry analyses between Northern and Southern hemispheres. This paper summarizes the results gathered during three summer campaigns, in 1999-2000, 2001 and 2003-2004.