An update global model of hmF2 from values estimated from ionosonde and COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 radio occultation

In this paper, we present our recent work on developing an updated global model of the ionospheric F2 peak height hmF2 parameter by combining data from the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3) radio occultation (RO) measurements and from the extended global ionosonde stations. In particular, 10 Chinese ionosonde stations’ data are newly introduced into this study. The modeling technique used is based on a two-layer empirical orthogonal function (EOF) expansion. Global distributions of hmF2 maps calculated using the newly constructed global model and the one provided by the International Reference Ionosphere model (IRI-ITU-R) are compared with the global distributions of hmF2 obtained by the COSMIC RO measurements and quantitative statistical analysis of the differences between the model results and those of the COSMIC RO measurements is made for the low (2008) and high (2012) solar activity years. The obtained average root-mean-square differences (RMSEs) for our model are 27.7 km (11.1%) and 31.0 km (9.8%), respectively for the years 2008 and 2012, whereas those for the IRI-ITU-R model are 39.9 km (16.9%) and 35.0 km (11.6%), respectively. Comparison of the results calculated both by our model and the IRI-ITU-R model with the digisonde observation is also made. The comparisons show that the newly constructed global hmF2 model can reproduce reasonably well the observations and perform better than IRI-ITU-R model.