Tongue of Ionization Motion Estimation From Polar TEC Sequences

Abstract

In this letter, a new approach to tracking the ionospheric-storm enhancements known as tongues of ionization (TOIs) is presented. In contrast to conventional model-based methods, the technique works by applying block-based motion estimation methods directly to ionospheric total electron content image sequences. Solutions to the particular problems posed by the low image resolution and the nonrigid motion of the TOIs are proposed. Experimental results for an image sequence covering the 2003 ldquoHalloween stormrdquo establish that the approach produces estimated motion fields that show a good correspondence with the observable motion when the interframe differences are not extreme.