Can a Smartphone Magnetometer Capture Space Weather?

Earth's magnetic field experiences interactions with space weather caused by energy streaming from the Sun. Examples of such events include coronal mass ejections (CME) and coronal hole winds, also known as geomagnetic storms. The research conducted in this project seeks to observe space weather disturbances of the magnetic field using the smartphone application, CrowdMag and aims to establish if smartphone geomagnetic data can effectively detect space weather events. Crowdmag data was collected in Boulder, CO and Fairbanks, AK and compared with data from the Boulder Magnetic Observatory and Fairbanks Magnetic Observatory, respectively. The locations were selected due to their position in the geomagnetic field. The Crowdmag data was collected with an iPhone 11 and a Samsung S7 Edge device. The noisy data in the smartphone dataset was removed using polynomial trends, median filtering, and moving averages as filtering techniques. We show that it is possible to see some space weather signals within the noisy CrowdMag data, especially closer to the pole (i.e., in Fairbanks, Alaska) where magnetic field variations are larger. Our studies suggest geomagnetic variation of more than 100 nT is needed to successfully filter the noise from CrowdMag smartphone data to accurately detect space weather signals.