Polar Ionospheric Imaging at Storm Time

Authors: Ping Yin; Cathryn Mitchell; Gary Bust; BATH UNIV (UNITED KINGDOM)

Abstract:

During periods of major geomagnetic storms the polar ionosphere becomes very variable. Ground-based measurements, such as NIMS, GPS or ionosonde data are too sparse to do tomographic imaging, however, combination of these data sources as well as other available measurements, such as satellitebased data, may have the possibility to monitor the structure of the disturbed polar ionosphere. In this paper, LEO-based GPS data onboard CHAMP as well as ground-based GPS and ionosonde observations are input into a four dimensional tomographic algorithm MIDAS (Multi-Instrument Data Analysis System) to image the disturbed ionosphere at Alaska and Greenland as well as over Europe for the major storm in October 2003. In contrast, electron density images produced by another independent method IDA3D (Ionospheric Data Assimilation Three Dimensional), which assimilates primarily NIMS data and other data source, are involved to perform comparisons. A general good agreement can be obtained between them. As a result, the addition of LEO-based GPS data presents a great potential in polar ionospheric imaging.

Limitations:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE