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Poster
Abstract:
Post sunset equatorial ionospheric plasma irregularities are a unique study case to investigate ion-neutral coupling in the low-latitude ionosphere, additionally, they are known to disturb radio wave communication.
We use high precision magnetometer data from 10 years of CHAMP (2000-2010) and the recent the Swarm (2013-today) LEO missions high precision magnetometer data to derive a global model of their occurrence rate in the F region ionosphere (300-500km). The model is derived by appropriate functions, e.g., parameterizing season, longitude, solar flux, local time and persistence to describe the significant probability distribution. The model shows very good agreement to earlier climatological investigations based on other satellite missions.
Identification of the plasma irregularities is through correlation between the high resolution insitu magnetic and electron density time series. This relation tells about ionospheric pressure-gradient electric currents. We find a typical global distribution of positive and negative correlation values opening new questions on processes of local ionospheric energy balance.
