On the basis of previous work,we develop a middle and low latitude theoretical ionospheric model in this paper...
YUE XinAn~(1,2,3),WAN WeiXing~(1+),LIU LiBo~1,LE HuiJun~1,CHEN YiDing~1 & YU Tao~(4,1) 1 Institute of Geology and Geophysics,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100029,China
On the basis of previous work, we develop a middle and low latitude theoretical ionospheric model in this paper, named Theoretical Ionospheric Model of the Earth in the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (TIME-IGGCAS). TIME-IGGCAS solves the equations of mass continuity, motion and energy of electron and ions self-consistently and uses an eccentric dipole field approxima-tion to the Earth’s magnetic field. We combine the Eulerian and Lagrangian approaches in the model and take account of the plasma E×B drift velocity. Calculation results reveal that the model is steady and credible and can reproduce most large-scale features of ionosphere. By using TIME-IGGCAS, we carried out an observation system data assimilation experiment. Assimilation results show that the E×B drift velocity can be accurately estimated by ingesting the observed foF2 and hmF2 into the model ap-plying nonlinear least-square fit method. We suggest that this work is of great significance in the de-velopment of ionospheric data assimilation model to give better nowcast and forecast of ionosphere.
YUE XinAnWAN WeiXingLIU LiBoLE HuiJunCHEN YiDingYU Tao
The behavior of the ionosphere before the Wenchuan earthquake is analyzed with the global TEC and ionospheric foF2 observed at Xiamen. It can be found from TEC maps that in the afternoon (16―18LT) on May 9, 2008, 3 days before the earthquake, there is an enhancement of TEC with an amplitude of 10―15 TECU appearing in the east-south direction of Wenchuan, and another enhancement appears at the conjugate region of the Southern Hemisphere with an amplitude of 10 TECU, but no obvious in-crement or decrement can be seen in other regions on global scale. It can also be found that on May 6 (6 days before the great earthquake), there is a decrement of TEC with small amplitude of 4TECU and larger area with 80° along the longitude in southern China, and there is no synchronous decrement observed at the conjugate region of the Southern Hemisphere. There are also many anomalies ob-served by ionosondes across China. The result shows that foF2 and TEC abnormally increased, which is different from pervious results that ionospheric parameters decreased prior to earthquakes. Pre-liminary results suggest that the enhancement on May 9 maybe has a close relationship with the pos-sible enhancement of ionospheric electric fields, and it may be an ionospheric precursor of earth-quakes. Whereas the decrement on May 6 may be attributed to the geomagnetic disturbance appearing on May 5.
