Detecting Ionospheric TEC Disturbances by Three Methods of Detrending through Dense CORS During A Strong Thunderstorm

Mohamed Freeshah,Xiaohong Zhang,Nahed Osama,Jun Chen,Mohammed Sadek,Nana Twumasi,Zhibo Zhao

doi:10.4401/ag-8372

Abstract

Satellite navigation and communications system can substantially be disturbed by ionospheric perturbations. Consequently, monitoring ionospheric anomalous has great significance. In this study, we focus on the short-term irregular disturbances through a strong thunderstorm in Wuhan City, Hubei, China by using ground-based GNSS observations from dense Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) with a sampling rate of 1s. The total electron content (TEC) was used to find possible perturbations after biases have been calibrated for the derived TEC. Additionally, the geomagnetic conditions and the state of solar radiation was checked in the study period to recognize the causes for the ionospheric disturbances. The maxima and minima values of TEC deviations were ~2.5 and 0.5 TECU, respectively. Three methods of Detrended Fluctuations Analysis (DFA) were applied to assess the ionospheric disturbances over GNSS CORS stations; “Multi-step numerical difference”(MSND), “6th order polynomials fitting” (PF), and “one-week average difference”(AD). The analyzed results showed that MSND has the lowest performance. Meanwhile, the fitted TEC data with 6th order polynomials technique presented an improvement and a discrepancy related to MSND. To resolve this discrepancy, we proposed AD technique, it accomplished the best performance related to the TEC disturbances and was compared with the other two techniques. The research findings showed that ionospheric disturbed electrons can be generated with various rates and different velocities through lightning influences.

Highlights

Reliable and fast knowledge about ionospheric variations has become increasingly important
The influence of lightning and their thunderstorms could transfer to the high atmosphere so, it is a good way to understand the upper atmosphere coupling by detecting the response of the ionosphere to this phenomenon
We investigated the ionospheric response by using ground-based GNSS observations from dense Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) during strong thunderstorms over Wuhan city

Summary

Introduction

Reliable and fast knowledge about ionospheric variations has become increasingly important. Irregular variations which happen due to some phenomena such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and underground nuclear explosions (UNE) could not be expected [Amieri-Simkooei and Asgari, 2012; Jain, Vijay, and Gwal, 1996; Park et al, 2011; Salem et al, 2015; Savastano et al, 2017; Yu et al, 2015; Zhang and Tang, 2015]. There are many studies dealing with ionospheric disturbances which respond to the aforementioned hazards [Amieri-Simkooei and Asgari, 2012; Calais & Minster, 1995; Jain et al, 1996; Park et al, 2011; Salem et al, 2015; Savastano et al, 2017; Yu et al, 2015; Zhang and Tang, 2015]. It is quite difficult to deal with this issue where lightning has multi epicenters and different starting times

Methods

Results

Conclusion