Abstract
Abstract. This letter reports for the first time the simulated error distribution of radio occultation (RO) electron density profiles (EDPs) from the Abel inversion in a systematic way. Occultation events observed by the COSMIC satellites are simulated during the spring equinox of 2008 by calculating the integrated total electron content (TEC) along the COSMIC occultation paths with the "true" electron density from an empirical model. The retrieval errors are computed by comparing the retrieved EDPs with the "true" EDPs. The results show that the retrieved NmF2 and hmF2 are generally in good agreement with the true values, but the reliability of the retrieved electron density degrades in low latitude regions and at low altitudes. Specifically, the Abel retrieval method overestimates electron density to the north and south of the crests of the equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA), and introduces artificial plasma caves underneath the EIA crests. At lower altitudes (E- and F1-regions), it results in three pseudo peaks in daytime electron densities along the magnetic latitude and a pseudo trough in nighttime equatorial electron densities.
Highlights
Since the success of the Global Positioning System/Meteorology (GPS/MET) experiment aboard the MicroLab 1 satellite, low Earth orbit (LEO) based radio occultation (RO) has become an important technique for sounding the Earth’s atmosphere
The retrieved electron density profiles (EDPs) reasonably represent the equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA) and track the latitudinal and height variations of the true electron density modeled by NeQuick
Through a simulation study we investigated the error distribution of the Abel inversion, which is often used to derive EDPs from RO data
Summary
Since the success of the Global Positioning System/Meteorology (GPS/MET) experiment aboard the MicroLab 1 satellite, low Earth orbit (LEO) based radio occultation (RO) has become an important technique for sounding the Earth’s atmosphere. It provides vertical profiles of refractivity, neutral density, temperature, pressure, and water vapor in the stratosphere and troposphere and electron density in the ionosphere (Hajj and Romans, 1998; Rocken et al, 2000; Schreiner et al, 1999). It is difficult to quantitatively evaluate the Abel retrieval error globally because there are not enough coincidences between RO and independent observations to provide good temporal and spatial coverage
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