GOLD observations of the merging of the Southern Crest of the equatorial ionization anomaly and aurora during the 10 and 11 May 2024 Mother's Day super geomagnetic storm

Using NASA's Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) imager, we report nightside ionospheric changes during the G5 super geomagnetic storm of 10 and 11 May 2024. Specifically, the nightside southern crest of the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA) was observed to merge with the aurora near the southern tip of South America. During the storm, the EIA southern crest was seen moving poleward as fast as 450 m/s. Furthermore, the aurora extended to mid-latitudes reaching the southern tips of Africa and South America. The poleward shift of the equatorial ionospheric structure and equatorward motion of the aurora means there was no mid-latitude ionosphere in this region. These observations offer unique insights into the ionospheric response to extreme geomagnetic disturbances, highlighting the complex interplay between solar activity and Earth's upper atmosphere.

To Access Resource:

Questions? Email Resource Support Contact:

  • opensky@ucar.edu
    UCAR/NCAR - Library

Resource Type publication
Temporal Range Begin N/A
Temporal Range End N/A
Temporal Resolution N/A
Bounding Box North Lat N/A
Bounding Box South Lat N/A
Bounding Box West Long N/A
Bounding Box East Long N/A
Spatial Representation N/A
Spatial Resolution N/A
Related Links

Related Dataset #1 : Electronic Space Weather upper atmosphere database (eSWua) - HF data, version 1.0
Additional Information N/A
Resource Format PDF
Standardized Resource Format PDF
Asset Size N/A
Legal Constraints

Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Access Constraints None
Software Implementation Language N/A

Resource Support Name N/A
Resource Support Email opensky@ucar.edu
Resource Support Organization UCAR/NCAR - Library
Distributor N/A
Metadata Contact Name N/A
Metadata Contact Email opensky@ucar.edu
Metadata Contact Organization UCAR/NCAR - Library

Author Karan, D. K.
Martinis, C. R.
Daniell, R. E.
Eastes, R. W.
Wang, Wenbin
McClintock, W. E.
R. G. Michell
England, S.
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2024-08-16T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
Alternate Identifier N/A
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
Progress N/A
Metadata Date 2025-07-10T19:59:25.595339
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:27418
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Karan, D. K., Martinis, C. R., Daniell, R. E., Eastes, R. W., Wang, Wenbin, McClintock, W. E., R. G. Michell, England, S.. (2024). GOLD observations of the merging of the Southern Crest of the equatorial ionization anomaly and aurora during the 10 and 11 May 2024 Mother's Day super geomagnetic storm. UCAR/NCAR - Library. https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7z60t9v. Accessed 11 August 2025.

Harvest Source