GPS scintillation and TEC depletion near the northern crest of equatorial anomaly over South China

This study presents a statistical analysis of GPS L-band scintillation with data observed from July 2008 to March 2012 at the northern crest of equatorial anomaly stations in Guangzhou and Shenzhen of South China. The variations of the scintillation with local time, season, solar activity and duration of scintillation patches were investigated. The relationship between the scintillation and TEC depletion was also reported. Our results revealed that GPS scintillation occurred from 19:30 LT (pre-midnight) to 03:00 LT (post-midnight). During quiet solar activity years, the scintillation was only observed in pre-midnight hours of equinox months and patches durations were mostly less than 60 min. During high solar activity years, more scintillation occurred in the pre-midnight hours of equinox and winter months; and GPS scintillation started to occur in the post-midnight hours of summer and winter. The duration of scintillation patches extended to 180 min in high solar activity years. Solar activity had a larger effect to strong scintillations (S₄ > 0.6) than to weak scintillations (0.6 ? S₄ > 0.2). Strong scintillations were accompanied by TEC depletion especially in equinox months. We also discussed the relationship between TEC depletion and plasma bubble.     

ULF/ELF ionospheric electric field and plasma perturbations related to Chile earthquakes

ULF/ELF electric field perturbations in the ionosphere have been widely observed by the satellites. In this paper, we develop a method of Logarithm Electric Field Intensity (LEFI) to automatically distinguish this kind of disturbances based on the spectrum intensity and its damping exponent with frequency in electromagnetic signals. This method is applied to DEMETER data processing around Chile earthquakes with magnitude larger than 6.0. It is found that 2/3 earthquakes have shown obvious ULF/ELF electric field perturbations in this region. The temporal and spatial distributions of electron density and temperature were compared with that of electric field, which proved the existence of irregularities above epicentral area. Finally, the coupling mechanism of earthquake-ionosphere is discussed based on multi-parameter analysis.     

Validation of the STORM model in IRI-2001 at a high latitude station

The International Reference Ionosphere IRI-2001 model contains geomagnetic activity dependence based on an empirical storm time ionospheric correction (STORM model). An extensive validation of the STORM model for the middle latitude region has been performed. In this paper the ability of the STORM model to predict foF2 values at high latitudes is analyzed. For this, ionosonde data obtained at Base Gral. San Martin (68.1°S, 293°E) are compared with those obtained by the IRI-2001 model with or without storm correction during four geomagnetic storms that occurred in 2000 (Rz₁₂ = 117) and 2001 (Rz₁₂ = 111). The results show that predicted values with the STORM model follow the behaviour of foF2 experimental data better than without the STORM model. The relative deviation between measured and predicted foF2 reaches values of up to 24% and 43% with and without the STORM model in IRI-2001, during the main phase of the storms. In order to explain increases of electron density that occurred prior to the storm onset and also decreases of electron density observed during the first part of the recovery of the storm, possible physical mechanisms are discussed.     

A model for calculating the vertical distribution of the atmospheric electric potential in the exchange layer in a maritime clean atmosphere

A theoretical model is developed for calculating the vertical distribution of atmospheric electric potential in exchange layer of maritime clean atmosphere. The transport of space charge in electrode layer acts as a convective generator in this model and plays a major role in determining potential distribution in vertical. Eddy diffusion is the main mechanism responsible for the distribution of space charge in vertical. Our results show that potential at a particular level increases with increase in the strength of eddy diffusion under similar conditions. A method is suggested to estimate columnar resistance, the ionospheric potential and the vertical atmospheric electric potential distribution in exchange layer from measurements of total air-earth current density and surface electric field made over oceans. The results are validated and found to be in very good agreement with the previous aircraft measurements. Different parameters involved in the proposed methodology can be determined either theoretically, as in the present work, or experimentally using the near surface atmospheric electrical measurements or using some other surface-based measurement technique such as LIDAR. A graphical relationship between the atmospheric eddy diffusion coefficient and height of exchange layer obtained from atmospheric electrical approach, is reported.     

A Celestial Analytic Positioning Method by Stellar Horizon Atmospheric Refraction

This article, in allusion to the limitation of conventional stellar horizon atmospheric refraction based on orbital dynamics model and nonlinear Kalman filter in practical applications, proposes a new celestial analytic positioning method by stellar horizon atmospheric refraction for high-altitude flight vehicles, such as spacecraft, airplanes and ballistic missiles. First, by setting up the geometric connexion among the flight vehicle, the Earth and the altitude of starlight refraction, an expression for the relationship of starlight refraction angle and atmospheric density is deduced. Second, there are produced a novel measurement model of starlight refraction in a continuous range of altitudes (CRA) from 20 km to 50 km on the basis of the standard atmospheric data in stratosphere, and an empirical formula of stellar horizon atmospheric refraction in the same altitudes against the tangent altitude. Third, there is introduced a celestial analytic positioning algorithm, which uses the least square differential correction instead of nonlinear Kalman filter. The information about positions of a flight vehicle can be obtained directly by solving a set of nonlinear measurement equations. The stellar positioning algorithm adopts the characteristics of stellar horizon atmospheric refraction thereby removing needs for orbit dynamics models and priori knowledge of flight vehicles. The simulation results evidence the validity of the proposed stellar positioning algorithm.     

Non-Gaussian clutter characterization applied to OTHR using a mixture of two Rayleigh probability density functions

A practical technique for characterizing non-Gaussian radar clutter is specified and demonstrated using Over The Horizon Radar (OTHR) data, as an example. The technique employs maximum likelihood to fit the probability density of the clutter amplitude returns to a mixture of two Rayleigh probability densities instead of the single Rayleigh density typically used for Gaussian clutter. This model for non-Gaussian clutter is fully specified for any set of clutter amplitudes by a log likelihood, two Rayleigh parameters, and a mixing coefficient. A 3D plot of these values yields an easily-visualized clutter characterization, as is illustrated using OTHR data. This technique is a demonstration of clutter characterization using OTHR data, but the method can be applied to characterize other types of clutter data.     

An improved approach to model ionospheric delays for single-frequency Precise Point Positioning

PPP with low-cost, single-frequency receivers has been receiving increasing interest in recent years because of its large amount of possible users. One crucial issue in single-frequency PPP is the mitigation of ionospheric delays which cannot be removed by combining observations on different frequencies. For this purpose, several approaches have been developed, such as, the approach using ionospheric model corrections with proper weight, the GRAPHIC (Group and Phase Ionosphere Calibration) approach, and the method to model ionospheric delays over a station with a low polynomial or stochastic process. From our investigation on the stochastic characteristics of the ionospheric delay over a station, it cannot be precisely represented by either a deterministic model in the form of a low-order polynomial or a stochastic process for each satellite, because of its strong irregular spatial and temporal variations. Therefore, a novel approach is developed accordingly in which the deterministic representation is further refined by a stochastic process for each satellite with an empirical model for its power density. Furthermore, ionospheric delay corrections from a constructed model using GNSS data are also included as pseudo-observations for a better solution. A large data set collected from about 200 IGS stations over one month in 2010 is processed with the new approach and several commonly adopted approaches for validation. The results show its significant improvements in terms of positioning accuracy and convergence time with a negligible extra processing time, which is also demonstrated by data collected with a low-cost, handheld, single-frequency receiver.     

Ionospheric slab thickness – Analysis, modelling and monitoring

A review of the climatological and storm-time behaviour of the ionospheric slab thickness is presented based on long-time observations at a European mid-latitude site, Dourbes (50.1°N, 04.6°E), and on published results from other studies. An operational electron density and slab thickness monitoring system, established to provide real-time characterisation of the local ionospheric dynamics, is outlined together with some exemplary results.     

Physical and model interpretation of HF radio propagation on the St. Petersburg–Longyearbyen (Svalbard) path

HF radio wave observations have been carried out with an oblique ionospheric sounding (OIS) method on the radio path from St. Petersburg to Longyearbyen (Svalbard), and experimental ionograms were obtained for December 2001. These ionograms have been analysed to investigate the impact of the main ionospheric trough (MIT) and magnetic disturbances on the signals on this path. The observations during weakly disturbed (K_р = 2) magnetic conditions on 14–15 December 2001 were compared with predictions from ray-tracing through a numerical model of the ionosphere. The ray-tracing computer program synthesizes the OIS ionograms by means of the “shooting method”. This method calculates trajectories of HF radio waves for different values of elevation angle and transmission frequency. There was a variety of calculated trajectories, from which we choose those which reach the receiver, and the selected paths provide a synthesis of the oblique ionograms. To simulate HF radio wave propagation, we apply a three-dimensional distribution of the electron density calculated with the mathematical model of the high-latitude ionosphere developed in the Polar Geophysical Institute (PGI). These numerical simulations permit us to interpret specific peculiarities of the OIS data such as abnormal propagation modes, increased delays of signals, enhanced MOF (maximum observed frequency) values etc. New results of the study are summarised as follows. (1) An unusual feature of the propagation along the path is the change of propagation mechanism during substorms on entering a path midpoint (or 1-hop reflection point) to the MIT. (2) Even weak substorms, having the distinguished intensities, lead to the appearance of different types of irregularities observed by the CUTLASS radar and therefore to the different propagation modes and F2MOF values. (3) The PGI model of the ionosphere was first used for ray-tracing at high latitudes. The model results are basically in a good qualitative agreement with experimental observations. This model provides the satisfactory agreement between the calculated and experimental F2MOF values while not correctly representing the fine structure of the experimental OIS ionograms at night. An agreement between the calculated and experimental data is better for day and evening hours than at night.     

CME dynamics using coronagraph and interplanetary ejecta data

In this work, we present a study of the coronal mass ejection (CME) dynamics using LASCO coronagraph observations combined with in-situ ACE plasma and magnetic field data, covering a continuous period of time from January 1997 to April 2001, complemented by few extreme events observed in 2001 and 2003. We show, for the first time, that the CME expansion speed correlates very well with the travel time to 1 AU of the interplanetary ejecta (or ICMEs) associated with the CMEs, as well as with their preceding shocks. The events analyzed in this work are a subset of the events studied in Schwenn et al. (2005), from which only the CMEs associated with interplanetary ejecta (ICMEs) were selected. Three models to predict CME travel time to Earth, two proposed by Gopalswamy et al. (2001) and one by Schwenn et al. (2005), were used to characterize the dynamical behavior of this set of events. Extreme events occurred in 2001 and 2003 were used to test the prediction capability of the models regarding CMEs with very high LASCO C3 speeds.