Impact of Solar Wind and Earth’s Magnetic Field on the Intensity of Cosmic Rays

Galactic cosmic rays (gcrs) are high energy particles mainly protons that are found in space and spread through our atmosphere. They come from all directions in space and the origin of some of them is unknown. Variations in gcr intensity observed at earth are due to irregularity of solar wind. Cosmic rays which travel towards the solar system are faced with outward flow of magnetized plasma known as solar wind and also heliospheric magnetic field (hmf). As cosmic rays travel; they interact with the solar wind and magnetic field which leads to changes in their energy and spectra. Short term variations of cosmic ray intensity were analysed in this work by using data obtained from a single neutron monitor (nm) for a period of two consecutive years. And the result shows that solar wind and earth’s magnetic field contribute immensely to the variation in the intensity of cosmic rays.