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RADIO SCIENCE, VOL. 39, RS1S12, doi:10.1029/2002RS002818, 2004

A power law power spectral density model of total electron content structure in the polar region

L. J. Nickisch

Mission Research Corporation, Monterey, California, USA


Abstract

Measurements by the early warning radar at Thule, Greenland, together with GPS measurements from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Ionospheric Measurement System (IMS) receiver, have been analyzed to develop a model for the structure of the total electron content (TEC) of the polar ionosphere. For the model the TEC measurements are related to the Wide Band Model (WBMOD), a climatological model of small-scale ionization structure. The TEC data agree very well with the predictions of a simple extension of WBMOD to larger scales, where a slightly steeper spectral slope (p ≈ 3) is used for the TEC structure (compared to p = 2.7 for the small-scale structure of WBMOD's polar region model). The benefit of this approach is that the TEC model subsumes the climatology of WBMOD, which is built upon two solar cycles of ionospheric measurements.

Received 11 November 2002; accepted 16 October 2003; published 24 January 2004.

Index Terms: 2439 Ionosphere: Ionospheric irregularities; 2475 Ionosphere: Polar cap ionosphere; 6929 Radio Science: Ionospheric physics (2409); 6934 Radio Science: Ionospheric propagation (2487); 6964 Radio Science: Radio wave propagation.

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Citation: Nickisch, L. J. (2004), A power law power spectral density model of total electron content structure in the polar region, Radio Sci., 39, RS1S12, doi:10.1029/2002RS002818.