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Studying the ionospheric responses induced by a geomagnetic storm in September 2017 with multiple observations in America

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Abstract

A series of studies have suggested proven that a geomagnetic storm can accelerate the formation of plasma depletions and the generation of ionospheric irregularities. Using observation data from the Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) network in the USA, the responses of the ionospheric total electron content (TEC) to the geomagnetic storm on September 8, 2017 are studied in detail. A mid-latitude trough was discovered from 01:00 UT to 06:00 UT in the USA with a length exceeding 5000 km. Medium-scale travelling ionospheric disturbances (MSTID) with wavelengths of 600–700 km were generated accompanied by a drop and perturbation in the electron density. The intensity of the MSTID fluctuations reached over 2.5 TECU, which were discovered by filtering the differential TEC. SWARM spaceborne observations also showed a drop in the electron density from 105 to 103 compared to the background values at 28° N, 96° W, and 25° N, 95° W. This research investigates super-scale plasma depletions generated by geomagnetic storms using both CORS GNSS and spaceborne observations. The proposed work is valuable for better understanding the evolution of ionospheric depletions during geomagnetic storms.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Plan by Ministry of Science and Technology 2016YFC1402502, the National Natural Science Foundation of China Innovation Group 61521091 and National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61771030, 61301087. The contribution is also supported by the 2011 Collaborative Innovation Center of Geospatial Technology and Youth Excellence Talent Project of Beihang University. The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their detailed and insightful comments and constructive suggestions. Special thanks should be given to China Scholarship Council for the great supports of this research. Y.L. gives special thanks to Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics during her stay at the Telecommunications/ICT for Development Laboratory of the Centre. Special thanks to all providers of data used (OMNIweb from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to provide IMF Bz, solar wind data; International Services of Geomagnetic Indices to provide Dst, AE/AU/AL data, National Geodetic Survey to provide CORS GPS data, European Space Agency to provide SWARM data used in this research).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Instrumentation and Opto-electronic Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, People’s Republic of China

    Yang Liu, Zheng Li, Lianjie Fu & Chunxi Zhang

  2. Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Telecommunications/ICT for Development Laboratory, 34151, Trieste, Italy

    Yang Liu

  3. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    Jinling Wang

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  1. Yang Liu
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Correspondence to Yang Liu.

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Liu, Y., Li, Z., Fu, L. et al. Studying the ionospheric responses induced by a geomagnetic storm in September 2017 with multiple observations in America. GPS Solut 24, 3 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-019-0916-1

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