Seasonal and solar activity variations of the Weddell Sea Anomaly observed in the TOPEX total electron content measurements

Abstract

The Weddell Sea Anomaly (WSA) in the ionosphere is characterized by higher plasma densities at night than during the day in the region near the Weddell Sea. According to previous studies on the WSA, it is known to occur mostly in southern summer and has not been reported in other seasons. We have utilized more than 13 years of TOPEX total electron content (TEC) measurements in order to study how the WSA varies with seasons and how it changes with solar activity. The TOPEX TEC data have been extensively utilized for climatological studies of the ionosphere because of their excellent spatial and temporal coverage. We investigate the seasonal and solar activity variations of the WSA using four seasonal cases (March equinox, June solstice, September equinox, and December solstice) and two solar activity conditions (F10.7 < 120 for solar minimum and F10.7 > 120 for solar maximum conditions) for geomagnetically quiet periods. Our analysis shows that (1) the WSA occurs only in the southern summer hemisphere for low F10.7, as in previous studies, but (2) the WSA occurs in all seasons except for winter when F10.7 is high; it is most prominent during the December solstice (southern summer) and still strong during both equinoxes. The TOPEX TEC maps in the midlatitude and high‐latitude ionosphere display significant global longitudinal variations for a given local time in the Southern Hemisphere, which varies with season and solar activity. The observed WSA appears to be an extreme manifestation of the longitudinal variations.