Investigation of Storm Enhanced Density Effects in Southern Hemisphere

S. Skone and A. Coster

Abstract:	Researchers have characterized and studied the phenomenon of storm enhanced density in recent years. The availability of data from hundreds of GPS reference stations throughout North America and Europe has allowed continuous monitoring of ionospheric total electron content with high spatial resolution. The storm enhanced density feature typically appears as a plume of enhanced total electron content, developing around local noon and extending to late afternoon/early evening hours and extending in a northwest direction from the lower mid-latitudes. Evolution of this effect has been clearly identified and studied in North America for several events. Observations of SEDs have been reported in South America, Europe, and Japan. Associated impacts on GPS data quality and positioning applications (such as scintillation effects, DGPS accuracies and deficiencies in the WAAS ionosphere model) have been assessed previously. To date, there has been minimal evaluation of storm enhanced density effects in the southern hemisphere, with the exception of South America. Analysis for southern latitudes has been limited by lack of publicly available GPS data (e.g. from the IGS network) to achieve adequate spatial resolution in total electron content (TEC) maps. With the implementation of several regional GPS networks and positioning services in Australia, there is a need to identify the presence of storm enhanced density effects and assess expected impact on GPS users. In this paper we investigate ionospheric effects in the southern hemisphere for storm enhanced density events in 2003 and 2006. The global evolution of these events has been established in previous studies. We now quantify the magnitude of associated gradients in the southern hemisphere, and investigate the presence of smaller-scale structures associated within the SED.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 20th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2007) September 25 - 28, 2007 Fort Worth Convention Center Fort Worth, TX
Pages:	2823 - 2831
Cite this article:	Skone, S., Coster, A., "Investigation of Storm Enhanced Density Effects in Southern Hemisphere," Proceedings of the 20th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2007), Fort Worth, TX, September 2007, pp. 2823-2831.
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