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Analysis of the TEC Prediction Performance of IRI-2016 Model in the Mid-Latitude Region

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Abstract

This paper investigates the performance of International Reference Ionosphere (IRI-2016) in predicting the variation of the Total Electron Content (TEC) over six IGS stations in the mid-latitude region. Three of the stations are in the northern hemisphere and three in the southern hemisphere. IRI-2016 TEC values are estimated using various Ne Topside, Ne F-peak and F-peak height options during different geomagnetic and solar activity conditions. Three different ionospheric conditions are considered; geomagnetic active-solar quiet days (June 23, 2015; October 7, 2015), geomagnetic-solar quiet days (May 23, 2015; July 19, 2015) and geomagnetic quiet-solar active days (July 8, 2014; December 18, 2014). Model derived TEC values are compared with the GPS-TEC data, which is used as a reference value. The overall results show that TEC predictions using IRI-2001 (Ne-Topside) and URSI (Ne F-peak) options provide better agreement with GPS-TEC values for the summer days. Whereas IRI01-corr—NeQuick (Ne-Topside) with CCIR (Ne F-peak) options predict well for the winter days. Besides, evaluation of the results reveals insignificant differences (<1 TECU) among three F-peak height option (AMTB-2013, SHU-2015 and BSE-1979) solutions. Furthermore, regardless of which IRI parameter is used during active days, the differences between IRI-TEC and GPS-TEC reach high values at some stations at some time intervals.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to express his gratitude to the IRI working group for providing IRI_2016 model. The author thanks the IONOLAB group for providing ionolabtecv1.30 software.

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  1. Department of Geomatics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Necmettin Erbakan University, Konya, Turkey

    Salih Alcay

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Salih Alcay Analysis of the TEC Prediction Performance of IRI-2016 Model in the Mid-Latitude Region. Geomagn. Aeron. 61, 600–618 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0016793221040149

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