Suppression of ionospheric scintillation during St. Patrick’s Day geomagnetic super storm as observed over the anomaly crest region station Pingtung, Taiwan: A case study

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the reasons behind the absence of ionospheric VHF scintillation over Pingtung, Taiwan during the March 17, 2015 St. Patrick’s Day geomagnetic storm. What makes it more interesting is the fact that the absence of scintillation on the storm day was preceded by observations of scintillation for 6 consecutive days before the storm. A combination of data from VHF receivers, ionosonde and in situ plasma density observations from European Space Agency (ESA)’s SWARM constellation were used for this purpose. Also, global hmF2 maps obtained from International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) Real-Time Assimilative Mapping (IRTAM) were utilised for a better picture of the ionospheric conditions. The main driver behind the absence of the scintillation in the Taiwanese sector was a reduced pre-reversal enhancement (PRE) electric field caused due to westward prompt-penetration electric field (PPEF). This caused the post-sunset ionosphere to drift downwards in altitude causing unfavourable conditions for Rayleigh-Taylor instability. On the contrary, the PPEFs were found to strongly enhance the PRE electric fields in the Indian sector leading to ionospheric irregularities/scintillations in the post-sunset sector.