Daytime and Nighttime Medium-Scale Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances to the June 2015 Geomagnetic Storm Detected by GEONET

Abstract

Medium-scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (MSTIDs) to the June 22 and 23, 2015 geomagnetic storm over Japan are investigated by using the Global Navigation Satellite System Earth Observation Network of Japan (GEONET) in this letter. We have detected two groups of MSTIDs on June 22 and 23 and a negative ionospheric disturbance response on June 22 observed by the high-resolution detrended total electron content (TEC) maps from GPS observations. The negative ionospheric response (IR) performs a large-scale ionosphere depletion covering a wide range of areas (~125°E to ~140°E and ~25°N to ~40°N) simultaneously, which starts at 1900 universal time (UT) [04:00 local time (LT)] with a period of ~30 min on June 22. Compared with typical MSTIDs, the nighttime and the daytime MSTIDs in this letter both have a southwestward propagated direction and a propagated velocity of ~87.8 and ~157.8 m/s, respectively. The physical sources of the IRs over Japan during this geomagnetic storm are possibly attributed to the prompt penetration electric field (PPEF) and lower atmospheric gravity waves (AGW) referring to the previous studies. We believe that these findings can contribute to the complement of ionospheric research on MSTIDs over Japan.