Premium
Validation and Improvement of NeQuick Topside Ionospheric Formulation Using COSMIC/FORMOSAT‐3 Data
Author(s) -
Singh Arun Kumar,
Haralambous Haris,
Oikonomou Christina
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9402
pISSN - 2169-9380
DOI - 10.1029/2020ja028720
Subject(s) - ionosphere , environmental science , tec , radio occultation , total electron content , cosmic cancer database , satellite , electron density , meteorology , atmospheric sciences , remote sensing , physics , electron , geology , geophysics , astronomy , quantum mechanics
Abstract We examine systematic differences between topside electron density measurements and different topside model formulations including α‐Chapman, NeQuick, and an improved NeQuick (NeQuick‐corr) topside formulation, recently proposed. The global topside electron density data set used, was extracted from Radio Occultation (RO) topside electron density profiles on board Low‐Earth Orbit satellites from the COSMIC/FORMOSAT‐3 (Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate and Formosa Satellite) mission. By using RO topside electron density measurements collocated with digisonde stations, we ensure that our investigation is based on two independent data sets (RO and digisondes). A subset of these profiles, with matched (within 5%) peak RO‐digisonde characteristics ( fo F2 and hm F2) is also exploited. This subset is exploited to extend the investigation on the basis of a higher quality validation data set. The comparison demonstrates that α‐Chapman and NeQuick‐corr underestimate, whereas NeQuick overestimates COSMIC topside electron density observations. The main outcome of this study is the significant NeQuick topside representation improvement that can be achieved near the F region peak, if the key parameter g , which controls the change of scale height with respect to altitude, is optimized to a value of 0.15 (compared to a currently adopted value of 0.125). The NeQuick‐corr topside formulation using the optimized g value of 0.15 outperforms all other topside formulations.