Joseph Jensen, Utah State University
Physics
The earths ionosphere is very important in our everyday life. During large solar flares the ionosphere expands to the point of disrupting communications from GPS, military, and commercial communications satellites, and even radio blackouts can occur. The EVE instrument on the SDO satellite has given unprecedented spectral resolution for the Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) spectrum with a time cadence of 10 seconds. This has made it possible to analyze flare spectra as never before. Using the Time Dependant Ionospheric Model (TDIM) we have input this new spectral data for large solar flares and analyzed the effect on the ionosphere. We take as a test case the X1.6 flare on March 9, 2011. Even this minor X-class provides insight into how the ionospheric layers respond differently to solar flares.