Ingestion of FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC GPS data into La Plata Ionospheric Model: A preliminary assessment

Abstract

La Plata Ionospheric Model (LPIM; Brunini et al., 2011) has been upgraded to a new stage enabling the ingestion of sTEC values retrieved from GPS receivers on board the FORMOSAT-3 Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC) satellites, in order to determine corrections to the global mean values of the ionosphere F2 layer critical frequency, foF2 (related to the peak density, NmF2) and the F2 layer peak height, hmF2. Once the corrections were computed, La Plata Ionospheric Model determined new foF2 and hmF2 values which were used to reproduce ionospheric electron density profiles depending on Universal Time, geographical coordinates, and solar and geomagnetic activity levels. These new profiles were compared with those obtained using LPIM but without COSMIC-GPS data ingestion and against International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) profiles; while the new values of the F2 peak parameters were compared with ionosonde measurements. These comparisons served to show that the incorporation of COSMIC-GPS data seems to provide LPIM with a better capability to render a more reliable representation of the F2 layer of the ionosphere. Consequently, results of the data ingestion process, as well as intra-technique and against IRI and observations comparisons are described, and general conclusions are presented. The most important being that: • Without data ingestion LPIM tends to overestimate NmF2 and to slightly underestimate hmF2.• LPIM has improved its representation of the F2 peak of the ionosphere.