Issue |
J. Space Weather Space Clim.
Volume 8, 2018
Space weather effects on GNSS and their mitigation
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A38 | |
Number of page(s) | 21 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/swsc/2018026 | |
Published online | 22 August 2018 |
Research Article
Improved characterization and modeling of equatorial plasma depletions
1
Observatori de l’Ebre (OE), Univ. Ramon Llull – CSIC, 43520
Roquetes, Spain
2
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, UPC Campus Nord, 08034
Barcelona, Spain
3
Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya IEEC/UPC, Edifici Nexus-201, 08034
Barcelona, Spain
4
RDA – Research and Development in Aerospace GmbH, Rigiplatz 5, 8006
Zürich, Switzerland
5
ESTEC, Keplerlaan 1, 2201 AZ
Noordwijk, The Netherlands
* Corresponding author: eblanch@obsebre.es
Received:
22
June
2017
Accepted:
16
June
2018
This manuscript presents a method to identify the occurrence of Equatorial Plasma Bubbles (EPBs) with data gathered from receivers of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). This method adapts a previously existing technique to detect Medium Scale Travelling Ionospheric Disturbances (MSTIDs), which focus on the 2nd time derivatives of total electron content estimated from GNSS signals (2DTEC). Results from this tool made possible to develop a comprehensive analysis of the characteristics of EPBs. Analyses of the probability of occurrence, effective time duration, depth of the depletion and total disturbance of the EPBs show their dependence on local time and season of the year at global scale within the latitude belt from 35°N to 35°S for the descending phase of solar cycle 23 and ascending phase of solar cycle 24, 2002–2014. These results made possible to build an EPBs model, bounded with the Solar Flux index, that simulates the probability of the number of EPBs and their characteristics expected for a representative day at given season and local time (LT). The model results provided insight into different important aspects: the maximum occurrence of bubbles take place near the equatorial anomaly crests, asymmetry between hemispheres and preferred longitudes with enhanced EPBs activity. Model output comparisons with independent observations confirmed its soundness.
Key words: Ionosphere (equatorial) / Aeronomy / Data analysis / Modelling / Irregularities
© E. Blanch et al., Published by EDP Sciences 2018
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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