SA13A-3979:
Performance of the IRI-2012 model in the equatorial region: Variations with longitude and solar activity
Monday, 15 December 2014
Jeffrey Klenzing, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, Angeline G Burrell, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1, United Kingdom, Dieter Bilitza, George Mason University Fairfax, Fairfax, VA, United States and Roderick A Heelis, University Texas Dallas, Richardson, TX, United States
Abstract:
The International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) is the internationally recognized model for calculating empirical ionospheric parameters such as plasma density, composition, and temperature. Estimates of the topside F-region ion density rely on accurately predicting the peak density and height of the F-layer and describing how the density decays with altitude. The latest incarnation of the IRI model (IRI-2012) includes two options to estimate the F-peak and three options to shape the topside profile. Previously it was shown that IRI overestimated the topside ionospheric densities during solar minimum between cycles 23 and 24, and the relative performance of the three topside shaper functions were compared. Here we reconstruct maps of the ionosphere near the magnetic equator using information about the F-peak from the Formosa Satellite-3/ Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC) and ion densities above 400 km from the Coupled Ion-Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI) instrument on the Communication/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) satellite. By simultaneously comparing the both the peak ionospheric density and the topside ion densities, we can better evaluate the combinations of the component models in IRI-2012.
