Ionospheric oscillations caused by geomagnetic Pi2 pulsations and their observations by multipoint continuous Doppler sounding; first results

In 2004, we started operating a continuous Doppler sounding system to investigate ionospheric signatures of infrasonic, short period acoustic gravity waves and geomagnetic pulsations. Since January 2007, four stable 3.59 MHz transmitters have been in operation in the western part of the Czech Republic. Multipoint measurements enable us to investigate horizontal propagation of waves and disturbances in the ionosphere and to estimate horizontal distances over which these waves (disturbances) are correlated.     

Spatio-temporal structure of the wave packets generated by the solar terminator

Using long-term (1998--2009) total electron content (TEC) measurements from the GPS global network including dense network of GPS sites in USA and Japan, we have obtained the first data regarding the spatio-temporal structure and the statistics of medium-scale traveling wave packets (MS TWPs) excited by the solar terminator (ST). Total amount of the detected TWPs exceeds 565,000. There is no correlation between TWPs occurrence and geomagnetic and solar activity. We found that the diurnal, seasonal and spectral MS TWPs characteristics are specified by the solar terminator (ST) dynamics. MS TWPs are the chains of narrow-band TEC oscillations with single packet’s duration of about 1–2 h and oscillation periods of 10–20 min. The total duration of chain is about 4–6 h. The MS TWPs spatial structure is characterized by a high degree of anisotropy and coherence at the distance of more than 10 wavelengths. Occurrence rate of daytime MS TWPs is high in winter and during equinoxes. Occurrence rate of nighttime MS TWPs has its peak in summer. These features are consistent with previous MS travelling ionosphere disturbance (TID) statistics obtained from 630-nm airglow imaging observations in Japan. In winter, MS TWPs in the northern hemisphere are observed 3–4 h after the morning ST passage. In summer, MS TWPs are detected 1.5–2 h before the evening ST appearance at the point of observations, but at the moment of the evening ST passage in the magneto-conjugate point. The obtained results are the first experimental evidence for the hypothesis of the ST-generated ion sound waves.     

Ionospheric correction using GPS Klobuchar coefficients with an empirical night-time delay model

We proposed an ionospheric correction approach called NKlob to mitigate the ionospheric delay errors. NKlob is a modification of the original GPS Ionospheric Correction Algorithm (ICA), which uses an empirical night-time model depending on the time, geomagnetic location and periodicities of the ionospheric behavior to replace the night-time constant delay in GPS ICA. Performance of NKlob was evaluated by the independent total electron contents (TECs) derived from Global Ionospheric Maps (GIMs) of the International GNSS Services (IGS) and Jason-2 altimetry satellite during 2013–2017. Compared to GIM TECs, NKlob corrects 51.5% of the ionospheric delay errors, which outperforms GPS ICA by 6.3%. Compared to Jason-2 TECs, NKlob mitigates the ionospheric errors by 58.1%, which is approximately 3.7% better than that of GPS ICA. NKlob shows significant improvement in low-latitude and equatorial regions with respect to GPS ICA, meanwhile exhibiting comparable performance at middle and high latitudes. Since NKlob only requires slight technical changes at the processing level of GPS receivers, we suppose that it can be easily implemented for better ionospheric delay corrections of real-time GPS single-frequency applications.     

Electron density profile calculation technique for Autoscala ionogram analysis

An electron density profile model with free parameters is introduced. Initially the parameters are calculated on the basis of the ionospheric characteristics automatically obtained from the ionograms by Autoscala and considering the helio-geophysical conditions. The technique used to adjust the free parameters to the particular ionograms recorded is presented.