GPS observations of the ionospheric F2-layer behavior during the 20th November 2003 geomagnetic storm over South Korea

GNSS Atmospheric and Ionospheric Sounding – Methods and Results

“…For example, Figure 11 shows a comparison of the GPS reconstructed electron density profile at 9:00 UT on 1 October 2003 with the available ionosonde data at Anyang station (37.39°N, 126.95°E) and the profiles from the IRI-2007 model. It can be seen that the GPS tomographically reconstructed density profile is in a good agreement with ionosonde data and the IRI-2007 model, but is closer to the ionosonde, which confirms the validity of our GPS ionospheric reconstruction approach (Jin et al, 2006 and2008).…”

“…These observations have facilitated greater advancements in meteorology, climatology, numerical weather model, atmospheric science and space weather (e.g., Jin et al, 2007;Jin et al, 2009;Schmidt, et al 2010). For example, the dual frequency ground GPS array could detect ionospheric response and its processes during large geomagnetic storms (Jin et al, 2008). Meanwhile, ground GPS also observed the plasma bubbles and retrieved reliable propagation characteristics of the depletions without assumptions about the mapping of the depletion along magnetic field lines to large latitudinal distances, comparable with airglow data (Haase et al, 2011).…”

“…Although a number of progresses in atmospheric and ionospheric sensing have been made using GPS RO missions in the past few years, they still do not satisfy actual requirements for short-time scales and higher temporal-spatial resolution monitoring together with ground GNS observations. For instance, the tropospheric or ionospheric profile information cannot be directly estimated from GPS tomography due to the lack of enough line-of-sight GPS signals passing each grid cell (Jin et al, 2006 and2008;Nesterov and Kunitsyn, 2011). Moreover, most current RO satellite missions are approaching their end of operations.…”

Storm induced large scale TIDs observed in GPS derived TEC

“…Other examples for an uplifted F2-layer during geomagnetic storms are reported e.g. by Prölss and Jung (1978) and Jin et al (2008). However, strong northward winds, which were described by Shiokawa et al (2002) and Shiokawa et al (2003) analysing the geomagnetic storm on the 31 March 2001 conflict with this idea indicating that more detailed investigation is necessary.…”

Observing and understanding the Earth system variations from space geodesy

“…Today, the space techniques such as GPS, VLBI, InSAR, DORIS and altimetry are able to measure such delays and corresponding precipitable water vapor (PWV) and ionospheric total electron content (TEC) with a high resolution and precision. These products have been widely applied in meteorology, climatology, numerical weather models, atmospheric science and space weather (e.g., Jin et al, 2006;Jin et al, 2008 point (120 E • , −87.5 S • ), which are mainly affected by solar activity. Additionally, the space-borne GPS radio occultation (RO) missions can estimate atmospheric and ionospheric products, including the pressure, temperature, water vapor, total electron content (TEC) and electron density as well as their variation characteristics, e.g., the US/Argentina SAC-C, German CHAMP (CHAllenging Minisatellite Payload), US/Germany GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), Taiwan/US FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC (FORMOsa SATellite mission -3/Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate) satellites, the German TerraSAR-X satellites and the European MetOp (Schmidt et al, 2010;Jin et al, 2011a).…”