AGATA: Advancing Polar Science through Multi-Instrument Integration and Collaboration

Scientific research has long recognized that solar-terrestrial interactions play a crucial role in shaping the polar atmosphere, impacting both climate dynamics and atmospheric coupling across different layers. Understanding these interactions is key to unraveling their far-reaching effects on Earth’s climate, space weather, and global atmospheric processes. The recognition of these critical processes has driven international research initiatives like the International Polar Year (IPY) programs, which involved thousands of researchers and facilitated global collaboration and data sharing. These efforts have established shared platforms, including databases and e-portals, that continue to facilitate scientific exchange in polar atmospheric research. Despite these advances, significant gaps remain in our understanding of how the upper and lower polar atmospheres interact, particularly how geomagnetic activity influences the inter-layer coupling between the different atmospheric layers in the high-latitude atmosphere.

AGATA (Antarctic Geospace and ATmosphere reseArch), is an initiative to bridge these gaps. Launched on January 1, 2025, AGATA integrates cutting-edge observational networks and international collaboration to study polar atmospheric dynamics, vertical coupling, and solar-terrestrial interactions.

Why study the Antarctic polar atmosphere?

The Antarctic region, often called Earth’s last frontier, provides an unparalleled natural laboratory for studying geophysical and atmospheric processes. Its unique location beneath the auroral oval offers exceptional conditions for observing solar particles interacting with Earth’s atmosphere, producing stunning auroras and influencing radio communications.

Several factors make Antarctica ideal for such research:

• Minimal human interference: The region’s isolation minimizes electromagnetic noise, allowing for highly accurate geophysical measurements.
• Unique atmospheric conditions: Antarctica’s extreme environment provides an ideal setting for studying atmospheric coupling, solar wind interactions, and space weather effects.
• Scarce observational data: Limited accessibility has resulted in sparse data from the Southern Hemisphere, making expanded research crucial for global atmospheric models.

What is AGATA?

AGATA is a Scientific Research Programme (SRP) of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) that aims to advance our understanding of the polar atmosphere through a multi-disciplinary approach. While focused on Antarctica, AGATA also adopts a bi-polar perspective, comparing and contrasting atmospheric processes in the Arctic and Antarctic to understand their role in the global climate system. This initiative seeks among others to explore the influence of solar-terrestrial conditions on the high-latitude atmosphere, leveraging ground-based multi-instrumentation networks and satellite-based observations to enhance our understanding of the polar atmosphere’s energy balance and its impact on global climate factors such as sea level, ice extent, and temperature.

AGATA’s core research areas:

1. Space weather monitoring: Space weather involves disturbances in Earth’s magnetosphere cause by activity on the Sun, such as flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and coronal holes. AGATA monitors these events using combined ground-based and space-borne observations acquired by magnetometers, ionosondes, auroral imagers, and other instruments. Historical and real-time data collected by AGATA members contribute to global space weather forecasting efforts, helping to mitigate risks to navigation, communications and satellite operations.

2. Ionospheric studies: AGATA studies ionospheric responses to solar and geomagnetic activity, using radar systems and GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) receivers to track ionospheric irregularities and disturbances.

3. Atmospheric physics and climate research: AGATA explores Antarctic atmospheric dynamics, focusing on processes like atmospheric waves and energy transfer, stratospheric warming, polar vortex behavior, and ozone depletion. The long-term goal is to support climate models and understand long-term environmental changes and their global implications.

4. Magnetospheric physics: Earth’s magnetosphere shields our planet from harmful solar radiation. As the magnetospheric cusps are over the poles, AGATA’s observations could help to study the magnetospheric structure and dynamics both during geomagnetic storms and quiet time, contributing to advance the current understanding and to better predict space weather impacts on Earth.

5. Scientific applications: AGATA aims to provide critical data for improving radio signal accuracy, space weather forecasting, and climate modeling.

AGATA builds on the legacy of prior SCAR programs such as ICESTAR (Interhemispheric Conjugacy Effects in Solar-Terrestrial and Aeronomy Research), and SCAR Expert Group GRAPE (GNSS Research and Application for Polar Environment), ensuring continued progress in polar atmosphere research. AGATA embeds the former SCAR Expert Group ANGWIN (Antarctic Gravity Wave Instrument Network) to explore vertical atmospheric coupling and energy balance in polar regions.

Why do we need AGATA?

Despite previous research efforts, key questions remain unanswered:

• • How are different atmospheric layers coupled in the Arctic and Antarctic?
  • How does the upper polar atmosphere respond to increased geomagnetic activity?
  • What role does the polar atmosphere play in short- and long-term climate variations?

AGATA seeks to answer these questions by integrating atmospheric science, geospace research, and climate studies, collaborating with other SCAR SRPs like AnClimNow (Antarctic Climate Now) and INSTANT (Instabilities & Thresholds in Antarctica).

AGATA objectives include:

1. Monitor and investigate polar atmospheric dynamics – Study vertical coupling between atmospheric layers and interactions with the magnetosphere
2. Explore Sun-Earth interactions – Study energy transfer mechanisms from space to the polar ionosphere, particularly in the ionosphere.
3. Support related scientific fields – Provide data on ionospheric and atmospheric disturbances affecting radio signals to improve weather and space weather forecasting and observational accuracy.

Figure 1: A Visualization of AGATA’s Main Objectives