Ionospheric–Thermospheric Responses to Geomagnetic Storms from Multi-Instrument Space Weather Data

Abstract

We analyze vertical total electron content (vTEC) variations from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) at different latitudes in different continents of the world during the geomagnetic storms of June 2015, August 2018, and November 2021. The resulting ionospheric perturbations at the low and mid-latitudes are investigated in terms of the prompt penetration electric field (PPEF), the equatorial electrojet (EEJ), and the magnetic H component from INTERMAGNET stations near the equator. East and Southeast Asia, Russia, and Oceania exhibited positive vTEC disturbances, while South American stations showed negative vTEC disturbances during all the storms. We also analyzed the vTEC from the Swarm satellites and found similar results to the retrieved vTEC data during the June 2015 and August 2018 storms. Moreover, we observed that ionospheric plasma tended to increase rapidly during the local afternoon in the main phase of the storms and has the opposite behavior at nighttime. The equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA) crest expansion to higher latitudes is driven by PPEF during daytime at the main and recovery phases of the storms. The magnetic H component exhibits longitudinal behavior along with the EEJ enhancement near the magnetic equator.

Operational Forecasting of Global Ionospheric TEC Maps 1-, 2-, and 3-Day in Advance by ConvLSTM Model

“…Geomagnetic perturbations have an important impact on the ionosphere, but forecasting magnetic storms is still a challenging task [46]. With increasing geomagnetic activity, the impacts of energetic particle precipitation on electron production in the ionosphere become more significant [47,48]. Therefore, we did not include geomagnetic indices in our training mainly for the above reasons.…”

Multi-Instrument Observation of the Ionospheric Irregularities and Disturbances during the 23–24 March 2023 Geomagnetic Storm

“…The quiet-time EEJ has been calculated by taking the average of five quietest days of the month. Further, the disturbed ionospheric currents (D iono ) at the equatorial latitudes during geomagnetic storms can be analyzed by subtracting the background magnetic field, solar quiet current (S R ), magnetic field baseline (H o ), and ring currents (D M ) [34,56].…”

“…The use of ground-and space-based observables can cross-validate the results from various atmospheric layers [13,21,32]. In addition, electron density measurements of F-layer, assimilation of magnetometer data, satellite-derived thermospheric O/N 2 and the neutral wind observations from Fabry-Perot interferometers (FPIs) have enabled to study the ionospheric-thermospheric coupling in detail [33,34].…”