Premium
Regional Short‐Term Forecasting of Ionospheric TEC and Scintillation
Author(s) -
Grzesiak Marcin,
Cesaroni Claudio,
Spogli Luca,
De Franceschi Giorgiana,
Romano Vincenzo
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
radio science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1944-799X
pISSN - 0048-6604
DOI - 10.1029/2017rs006310
Subject(s) - scintillation , tec , interplanetary scintillation , amplitude , total electron content , ionosphere , environmental science , meteorology , standard deviation , term (time) , satellite , latitude , physics , mathematics , geodesy , statistics , optics , geology , geophysics , nuclear physics , coronal mass ejection , astronomy , detector , solar wind , quantum mechanics , plasma
We describe a novel empirical technique for the regional, short‐term (from seconds to minutes) forecasting of both TEC (total electron content) and scintillation indices on Global Navigation Satellite System signals. To provide TEC‐forecasted values, the method exploits the continuity equation in the conservative form, while the continuity equation with source term added is used in the case of scintillation forecasting. The performance of the model is investigated, resulting to be satisfactory when applied at equatorial latitudes in Brazil and during postsunset hours, when scintillation phenomena are more likely to occur. Five days affected by strong amplitude scintillation events ( S 4 > 0.7) are used to test the model performance and evaluate the model accuracy. In addition, the performance of the amplitude scintillation forecasting is evaluated by leveraging on larger statistics. On the average, the forecasting accuracy, in terms of standard deviation of the distributions of the differences between forecasted and actual values, is about 5% for TEC and 15–20% for scintillation parameters.