Investigation on contribution of neutron monitor data to estimation of aviation doses

Abstract

Recently, many efforts have appeared to routinely measure radiation exposure (RE) of aircraft crew due to cosmic rays (CR). On the other hand real-time CR data measured with the ground based neutron monitors (NMs) are collected worldwide and available online. This is an opportunity for comparison of long-term observations of RE at altitudes of about 10km, where composition and energy spectra of secondary particles differ from those on the ground, with the data from NMs. Our contribution presents examples of such type of comparison.Analysis of the silicon spectrometer Liulin measurements aboard aircraft is presented over the period May–September 2005 and compared with data from a single NM at middle latitude. While extreme solar driven events observed by NMs have clearly shown an impact on dosimetric characteristics as measured on the airplanes, the transient short time effects in CR of smaller amplitude have been not studied extensively in relation to RE. For the period May–September 2005, when aircraft data become available and several Forbush decreases (FDs) are observed on the ground, a small improvement in the correlation between the dose measured and multiple linear regression fit based on two key parameters (altitude and geomagnetic cut-off rigidity), is obtained, if the CR intensity at a single NM is added into the scheme.