PROGRAM: P-17

Title:

IONOSPHERIC TOTAL ELECTRON CONTENT VARIABILITY OVER LOW, MID AND HIGH LATITUDES

Abstract:

Total electron content (TEC) is a ionospheric parameter that describes the major impact of the ionosphere on the propagation of radio waves which is crucial for terrestrial and Earth space communication including Global Positioning system (GPS). For this analysis we employed a dual frequency GPS receiver at low, mid and high latitude stations viz IISC, Bangalore, India (13.02 0 N, 77.57 0 E), GUAO, Urumqi, China (43.82 0 N, 87.60 0 E) and NYAL, NY-Alesund, Norway (78.92 0 N, 11.86 0 E) respectively, we used one year of data for a high solar activity period of 24 th solar cycle i.e. during January 2012 to December 2012. TEC values obtained from the SOPAC (Scripps Orbits and Permanent Array Center) data archive of the IGS (International GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) Service) for all the stations show large variations. From our analysis we observed that TEC achieves its highest values during the months of October and March at low latitude, during the month of April and May at mid latitude and during the September and March at high latitude while the lowest values of TEC were recorded at all the station in December month. Similarly, the highest values of TEC are recorded during the equinox season while the lowest values are recorded in the month of winter. This research obtains a practical approach to study the ionospheric variability at low, mid, and high latitude.

Acknowledgements:

The author (P.K Purohit) would like to thank Scripps Orbit and Permanent Array Center SOPAC, and Omni Data centre website omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov, for data sets used in the investigation.

References:

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