Issue |
J. Space Weather Space Clim.
Volume 8, 2018
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A27 | |
Number of page(s) | 22 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/swsc/2018006 | |
Published online | 17 April 2018 |
Research Article
Multi-station investigation of spread F over Europe during low to high solar activity
1
Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, University of Calcutta,
Calcutta, India
2
Frederick University,
Nicosia, Cyprus
3
Frederick Research Center,
Nicosia, Cyprus
4
National observatory of Athens,
Athens, Greece
5
Institute of Atmospheric Physics,
Prague, Czech Republic
* Corresponding author: krish6372@gmail.com
Received:
5
October
2017
Accepted:
24
January
2018
Spread F is an ionospheric phenomenon which has been reported and analyzed extensively over equatorial regions on the basis of the Rayleigh-Taylor (R-T) instability. It has also been investigated over midlatitude regions, mostly over the Southern Hemisphere with its generation attributed to the Perkins instability mechanism. Over midlatitudes it has also been correlated with geomagnetic storms through the excitation of travelling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) and subsequent F region uplifts. The present study deals with the occurrence rate of nighttime spread F events and their diurnal, seasonal and solar cycle variation observed over three stations in the European longitude sector namely Nicosia (geographic Lat: 35.29 °N, Long: 33.38 °E geographic: geomagnetic Lat: 29.38 °N), Athens (geographic Lat: 37.98 °N, Long: 23.73 °E geographic: geomagnetic Lat: 34.61 °N) and Pruhonice (geographic Lat: 50.05 °N, Long: 14.41 °E geographic: geomagnetic Lat: 47.7 °N) during 2009, 2015 and 2016 encompassing periods of low, medium and high solar activity, respectively. The latitudinal and longitudinal variation of spread F occurrence was examined by considering different instability triggering mechanisms and precursors which past literature identified as critical to the generation of spread F events. The main findings of this investigation is an inverse solar cycle and annual temporal dependence of the spread F occurrence rate and a different dominant spread F type between low and high European midlatitudes.
Key words: nighttime midlatitude ionosphere over Europe / effects of solar activity over spread F occurrence / longitudinal and latitudinal dependence of spread F occurrence
© K.S. Paul 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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