New Cyberinfrastructure for GNSS Ionospheric Scintillation and Total Electron Content Parameters

Abstract

The Monitors for Alaskan and Canadian Auroral Weather in Space (MACAWS) project was launched this year. Its goal is to install an additional thirty-five GNSS scintillation receivers in Northern Alaska and northwestern Canada (Northern Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba). Key advances will be: 1) the incorporation GLONASS total electron content data, along with GPS measurements, into global TEC maps; 2) the development of a real-time (or near real-time) capability of TEC measurements, and 3) the development of software that triggers the collection of the high-rate scintillation data across the sensor network. Separately, a portable weather system will be deployed with these units to estimate the precipitable water vapor measured by the GNSS units. The high-rate GNSS data is required for detailed analysis of scintillation during geomagnetically active time periods. These data will be input into the National Science Foundation’s Coupling Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR) Madrigal database. Madrigal is a robust, World Wide Web based system capable of managing and serving archival and realtime data, in a variety of formats, from a wide range of upper atmospheric science instruments. Plans are now being made to develop built-in tools to merge different datasets within Madrigal, in order to enable to quicker monitoring of space weather events. In the past, SUPERDARN convection data has been overlaid onto GNSS TEC maps showing the formation of the tongue of ionization (TOI) that flows over the polar cap. With the new scintillation data sets available, the values of the scintillation parameters can be denoted on these maps and studied for their correlation with ionospheric gradients and their relationship to the TOI. Another example is the use of GNSS TEC data in the tracking of the energetic particle precipitation boundary during substorms. By overlaying, the TEC data onto optical imaging data from the Transition Region Explorer (TREx) – A Ground-Based Sensor Web for Space Weather Research, the correlation of GNSS TEC to substorm behavior can be studied. These new products will enable a better understanding of physical mechanisms behind space weather disturbances.