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Zakharenkova Irina

Institute:
WD IZMIRAN.
Kaliningrad, Russia

IONOSPHERIC ELECTRON CONTENT OVER EUROPEAN MID-LATITUDES AND ITS COMPARISON WITH GPS TEC MEASUREMENTS

Authors: 1 Zakharenkova I.E., 1 Shagimuratov I.I., 2 Krankowski A., 2 Krypiak-Gregorczyk A., 1 WD IZMIRAN, Kaliningrad, Russia, 2 UWM/GRL, Olsztyn, Poland

FormoSat-3/COSMIC (F3/C) now provides unprecedented global coverage of GPS occultations measurements, each of which yields the ionosphere electron density information with high vertical resolution. This report is focused on the study of the electron density profiles derived from F3/C radio occultation (RO) measurements. The region of the European mid-latitudes with 2 closely located ionosonde stations – Pruhonice (50.0 E, 14.6 N) and Juliusruh (54.6 E, 13.4 N) – was considered. The F3/C RO profiles were selected if the tangential points of the signal ray path were within the limits of the considered region. Also the total electron content (TEC) values were calculated using the observations of the nearest ground-based GPS stations located in European region. To compare GPS TEC with F3/C RO and ionosondes’ data these profiles were integrated. So, comparison of GPS TEC, F3/C IEC and ionosonde IEC was carried out for different seasonal conditions during period of low solar activity. Special attention was focused on the differences in topside and bottomside parts of the ionosphere, as F3/C provided experimental data while topside ionosonde profile is obtained by fitting a model to the peak electron density value. GPS TEC values are greater than F3/C and ionosonde data as GPS TEC contains IEC and PEC (plasmaspheric electron content). This procedure can be useful to estimate the impact of PEC into TEC. Results of the comparative analysis between GPS TEC and IEC with changes in bottomside, topside and PEC are presented for quiet and disturbed geomagnetic conditions.
Ionosphere, GPS TEC, IEC, radio occultation

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