Observations and modeling of ionospheric scintillations at South Pole during six X‐class solar flares in 2013

Abstract

Using two B‐spline basis functions of degree 4 and the ionospheric scintillation data from a Global Positioning Satellite System (GPS) scintillation receiver at South Pole, we reproduced ionospheric scintillation indices for the periods of the six X‐class solar flares in 2013. These reproduced indices have filled the data gaps, and they are serving as a smooth replica of the real observations. In either event, these modeled scintillation indices are minimizing the geometrical effects between GPS satellite and the receiver. Six X‐class solar flares have been studied during the summer and winter months, using the produced scintillation indices based on the observations from the GPS receiver at South Pole and the in situ plasma measurement from the associated passing of Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. Our results show that the solar flare peak suppresses the scintillation level and builds time‐independent scintillation patterns; however, after a certain time from the solar flare peak, complicated scintillation patterns develop at high‐latitude ionosphere and spread toward the polar cap boundary region. Substantial consistency has been found between moderate proton fluxes and scintillation enhancement.

Solar cycle and seasonal variations of the GPS phase scintillation at high latitudes

“…Other studies focused on the statistical scintillation climatology maps (e.g. Spogli et al, 2009;Alfonsi et al, 2011;Prikryl et al, 2011Prikryl et al, , 2015, and their response to the solar flares (Priyadarshi et al, 2016) and solar wind variations (corotating interaction regions or interplanetary coronal mass ejections, e.g. Prikryl et al, 2012).…”

Ionospheric perturbations initiated due to the forest-fire over Greece as a consequence of lithosphere-atmosphere-ionosphere coupling

“…In this way the binned detrended TEC data is projected on the univariate B-spline basis functions N i,4 and M j,4 . B-spline techniques are best for such TEC fluctuation studies as they preserve the local trend of the data and avoid any sudden fluctuations (e.g., Priyadarshi et al 2018;Priyadarshi and Wernik 2014;Priyadarshi 2015;Priyadarshi et al 2016). Due to the projecting the detrended TEC data on the two univariate B-spline basis functions along the latitude and longitude, the data visualization is enhanced by 1/10 thᴼ in latitude as well as in the longitude.…”

Ionospheric Scintillation Modeling Needs and Tricks

“…Let us understand this by an illustrative example. Following the South Pole scintillation model developed by Priyadarshi et al [18], we have produced modeled amplitude and phase scintillation maps for two geomagnetic storms, which occurred in the year 2014 (please see Figures 4 and 5). This South Pole empirical scintillation model uses two b-spline functions of degree 4, along with the Ap index and scintillation observation recorded over South Pole GSV4004 scintillation receiver (location, 89.99°geographic latitude; 93.77°geographic longitude; geomagnetic coordinate, 73.5°, 127.8°).…”