No Arabic abstract
This paper proposes a new method for estimating the contribution from different ionospheric regions to the response of total electron content variations to the solar flare which uses the effect of partial shadowing of the atmosphere by the terrestrial globe. The study uses GPS stations located near the boundary of the shadow on the ground in the nightside hemisphere. The beams between the satellite-borne transmitter and the receiver on the ground for these stations pass partially through the atmosphere lying in the region of total shadow and partially through the illuminated atmosphere. The analysis of the ionospheric effect of a powerful solar flare of class X5.7/3B that was recorded on July 14, 2000 (10:24 UT, N22W07) in quiet geomagnetic conditions (Dst=-10 nT) has shown that about 20% of the TEC increase correspond to the ionospheric region lying below 100 km, about 5% refer to the ionospheric E-region (100-140 km), about 30% correspond to the F1-region (140-200 km), and about 30% to regions lying above 300 km.
Results derived from analysing the ionosphere response to faint and bright solar flares are presented. The analysis used technology of a global detection of ionospheric effects from solar flares as developed by the authors, on the basis of phase measurements of the total electron content (TEC) in the ionosphere using an international GPS network. The essence of the method is that use is made of appropriate filtering and a coherent processing of variations in the TEC which is determined from GPS data, simultaneously for the entire set of visible GPS satellites at all stations used in the analysis. This technique is useful for identifying the ionospheric response to faint solar flares (of X-ray class C) when the variation amplitude of the TEC response to separate line-on-sight to GPS satellite is comparable to the level of background fluctuations. The dependence of the TEC variation response amplitude on the flares location on the Sun is investigated.
Seven-year long seeing-free observations of solar magnetic fields with the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) were used to study the sources of the solar mean magnetic field, SMMF, defined as the net line-of-sight magnetic flux divided over the solar disk area. To evaluate the contribution of different regions to the SMMF, we separated all the pixels of each SDO/HMI magnetogram into three subsets: weak (B_W), intermediate (B_I), and strong (B_S) fields. The B_W component represents areas with magnetic flux densities below the chosen threshold; the B_I component is mainly represented by network fields, remains of decayed active regions (ARs), and ephemeral regions. The B_S component consists of magnetic elements in ARs. To derive the contribution of a subset to the total SMMF, the linear regression coefficients between the corresponding component and the SMMF were calculated. We found that: i) when the threshold level of 30 Mx cm^-2 is applied, the B_I and B_S components together contribute from 65% to 95% of the SMMF, while the fraction of the occupied area varies in a range of 2-6% of the disk area; ii) as the threshold magnitude is lowered to 6 Mx cm^-2, the contribution from B_I+B_S grows to 98%, and the fraction of the occupied area reaches the value of about 40% of the solar disk. In summary, we found that regardless of the threshold level, only a small part of the solar disk area contributes to the SMMF. This means that the photospheric magnetic structure is an intermittent, inherently porous medium, resembling a percolation cluster. These findings suggest that the long-standing concept that continuous vast unipolar areas on the solar surface are the source of the SMMF may need to be reconsidered.
Using the international ground-based network of two-frequency receivers of the GPS navigation system provides a means of carrying out a global, continuous and fully-computerized monitoring of phase fluctuations of signals from satellite-borne radio engineering systems caused by the Earths inhomogeneous and nonstationary ionosphere. We found that during major geomagnetic storms, the errors of determination of the range, frequency Doppler shift and angles of arrival of transionospheric radio signals exceeds the one for magnetically quiet days by one order of magnitude as a minimum. This can be the cause of performance degradation of current satellite radio engineering navigation, communication and radar systems as well as of superlong-baseline radio interferometry systems.
We investigate an unusual class of medium-scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (MS TIDs) of the nonwave type, isolated ionospheric disturbances (IIDs) that manifest themselves in total electron content (TEC) variations in the form of single aperiodic negative TEC disturbances of a duration of about 10 min (the total electron content spikes, TECS). It was found that TECS are observed in no more than 1-2 % of the total number of radio paths. We present the results derived from analyzing the dependence of TECS parameters on local time, and on the level of geomagnetic activity. The TECS amplitude exceeds at least one order of magnitude the TEC fluctuation intensity under background conditions. To analyze TECS dynamic characteristics the event of 5 October, 2001 was used.
In this paper an attempt is made to verify the hypothesis on the role of geomagnetic disturbances as a factor determining the intensity of traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs). To improve the statistical validity of the data, we have used the based on the new GLOBDET technology method involving a global spatial averaging of disturbance spectra of the total electron content (TEC). To characterize the TID intensity quantitatively, we suggest that a new global index of the degree of disturbance should be used, which is equal to the mean value of the rms variations in TEC within the selected range of spectral periods (of 20-60 min in the present case). It was found that power spectra of daytime TEC variations in the range of 20-60 min periods under quiet conditions have a power-law form, with the slope index k = -2.5. With an increase of the level of magnetic disturbance, there is an increase in total intensity of TIDs, with a concurrent kink of the spectrum caused by an increase in oscillation intensity in the range of 20-60 min. It was found that an increase in the level of geomagnetic activity is accompanied by an increase in total intensity of TEC; however, it correlates not with the absolute level of Dst, but with the value of the time derivative of Dst (a maximum correlation coefficient reaches -0.94). The delay of the TID response of the order of 2 hours is consistent with the view that TIDs are generated in auroral regions, and propagate equatorward with the velocity of about 300-400 m/s.