Equatorial scintillation characteristics during solar minimum: Observations from the SCINDA network

Author

Groves, Keith ; Caton, Ronald ; Retterer, John ; Carrano, Charles ; Bridgwood, Christopher ; Basu, Santimay

Author_Institution

Air Force Res. Lab., Hanscom AFB, MA, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

13-20 Aug. 2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

2

Abstract

The Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite was launched in April 2008 for the purpose of specifying and forecasting equatorial ionospheric scintillation. For the first two years on orbit the satellite operated in a period of very low solar flux and observed a significant occurrence of irregularities in the post-midnight timeframe while detecting an unexpectedly low level of disturbances in the post-sunset sector prior to midnight. Here we investigate the occurrence of irregularities as observed from the SCINDA network of ground sensors, comparing and contrasting differences and similarities.

Keywords

ionospheric disturbances; ionospheric electromagnetic wave propagation; solar activity; solar-terrestrial relationships; C-NOFS satellite; Communication-Navigation Outage Forecast System; SCINDA network; equatorial ionospheric scintillation forecasting; equatorial scintillation; ground sensors; ionospheric disturbance; post-midnight timeframe; post-sunset sector; solar minimum; Electric fields; Ionosphere; Plasmas; Satellite broadcasting; Satellites; Spaceborne radar; USA Councils;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

General Assembly and Scientific Symposium, 2011 XXXth URSI

Conference_Location

Istanbul

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5117-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/URSIGASS.2011.6050913

Filename

6050913