Browsing by Author "Nikbakhsh, Shabnam"

This dissertation develops and introduces a new interplanetary (IP) shock database. The database includes currently IP shocks and their related parameters for four years: 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2008 identified using the data provided by the Advance Composition Explorer(ACE) spacecraft. IP shocks have a crucial role in space weather as they are responsible for the most effective particle acceleration in the solar corona and solar wind. These particles are hazardous for satellites and space-embedded technology. Thus, studying of IP shocks has received considerable attention in recent decades and to date various lists and databases have been developed and introduced to study IP shocks. This database provides an important opportunity to advance the understanding of IP shocks. In the future the database will be extended to have a comprehensive coverage of observations from the spacecraft that have been monitoring the solar wind (e.g. Wind, ACE, STEREO) it brings users a new system for quick analysis of IP shock properties. One can filter IP shocks from the database by date and several key shock parameters, e.g., shock type, magnetosonic speed, etc. This thesis will introduce theory behind IP shocks, the structure of the database and how IP shock candidates were selected. In addition, a statical analysis of ACE IP shocks for 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2008 are performed.