Research Article

GPS scintillation effects associated with polar cap patches and substorm auroral activity: direct comparison

¹ Department of Physics, University of Oslo, PO Box 1048 Blindern, NO-0316 Oslo, Norway
² Arctic Geophysics, University Centre in Svalbard, N-9171 Longyearbyen, Norway

^* Corresponding author: yaqi.jin@fys.uio.no

Received: 12 March 2014
Accepted: 2 July 2014

Abstract

We directly compare the relative GPS scintillation levels associated with regions of enhanced plasma irregularities called auroral arcs, polar cap patches, and auroral blobs that frequently occur in the polar ionosphere. On January 13, 2013 from Ny-Ålesund, several polar cap patches were observed to exit the polar cap into the auroral oval, and were then termed auroral blobs. This gave us an unprecedented opportunity to compare the relative scintillation levels associated with these three phenomena. The blobs were associated with the strongest phase scintillation (σ_ϕ), followed by patches and arcs, with σ_ϕ up to 0.6, 0.5, and 0.1 rad, respectively. Our observations indicate that most patches in the nightside polar cap have produced significant scintillations, but not all of them. Since the blobs are formed after patches merged into auroral regions, in space weather predictions of GPS scintillations, it will be important to enable predictions of patches exiting the polar cap.