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The ionospheric irregularities climatology over Svalbard from solar cycle 23

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Giorgiana De Franceschi, Luca Spogli, Lucilla Alfonsi, Vincenzo Romano, Claudio Cesaroni, Ingrid Hunstad

An unprecedented climatology of the ionospheric irregularities over the Svalbard (NO) derived from the longest Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) scintillation data series ever collected. Two receivers for scintillation monitoring are working at Ny-Ålesund, the first of which has been installed in late September 2003.

Climatological maps of occurrence of sigma_phi and S4 above the moderate to strong scintillation threshold. Maps are sorted according different level of Kp: quiet (left plots), minor/moderate G1-G2 (middle plots) and strong/severe/extreme G3-G4-G5 (right plots).

They are able to investigate auroral and cusp/cap regions and the length of the data series allows describing the Arctic ionosphere along about two solar cycles, from the descending phase of cycle 23 to almost the end of cycle 24. A detailed assessment of the long-term behaviour of the ionosphere under solar maximum and solar minimum conditions is provided including several periods of perturbed ionospheric weather caused by unfavourable heliogeophysical conditions. Since November 2015, a multi-constellation GNSS receiver has been deployed in Ny-Ålesund, providing the opportunity to perform the ionospheric climatology from Galileo signals. The results offer realistic features of the high latitude ionosphere, providing a broad spectrum of ionospheric reactions to different space weather conditions.

Publication: De Franceschi, G., Spogli, L., Alfonsi, L., Romano, V., Cesaroni, C., & Hunstad, I. (2019). The ionospheric irregularities climatology over Svalbard from solar cycle 23. Scientific reports, 9(1), 1-14.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44829-5