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Using solar wind data to predict daily GPS scintillation occurrence in the African and Asian low‐latitude regions
Author(s) -
Carter B. A.,
Retterer J. M.,
Yizengaw E.,
Wiens K.,
Wing S.,
Groves K.,
Caton R.,
Bridgwood C.,
Francis M.,
Terkildsen M.,
Norman R.,
Zhang K.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2014gl062203
Subject(s) - interplanetary scintillation , global positioning system , scintillation , solar wind , latitude , meteorology , remote sensing , environmental science , low latitude , climatology , geology , geodesy , atmospheric sciences , geography , coronal mass ejection , plasma , physics , computer science , quantum mechanics , detector , optics , telecommunications
The feasibility of predicting the daily occurrence of Global Positioning System scintillation events using forecasts of common geophysical indices to drive a physics‐based model of the system is demonstrated over a 5 month period for the African and Asian longitude sectors. The output from the Wing K p model, which uses solar wind data to predict the geomagnetic activity level up to 4 h in advance, was used to drive the National Center for Atmospheric Research thermosphere/ionosphere model, from which the strength of the Rayleigh‐Taylor instability growth rate was calculated to determine the likelihood of scintillation. It is found that the physics‐based model demonstrates superior skill to an empirical scintillation model (Wideband Model (WBMOD)) in forecasting scintillation suppression events during seasons when scintillation is common. However, neither of the models driven in this way possess the ability to forecast isolated scintillation events during transitional and off‐peak seasons.