Study of the low and mid-latitude ionospheric response to the geomagnetic storm of 20th December 2015
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Study of the low and mid-latitude ionospheric response to the geomagnetic storm of 20th December 2015 Bapan Paul1 · Galina Gordiyenko2 · Praveen Galav3
Received: 12 June 2020 / Accepted: 16 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The ionospheric response over the low and midlatitudes along the 78◦ ± 3◦ E longitude sector is studied for the 20th December 2015 geomagnetic storm. The global positioning system (GPS) derived total electron content (TEC) over mid & low-latitude stations and also an ionosonde observation of the F2 layer critical frequency over a midlatitude station are analyzed. On the day of storm (20th December) the interplanetary magnetic field turned southward around 0330 UT and reached to its minimum value around −20 nT. SYM-H index started to decline at the same time and attained to its minimum value of about −180 nT at around 2330 UT after a very long main-phase duration (∼20 hours). During the storm’s main phase, a large TEC variation is observed for both the locations which have been attributed to the prompt penetration electric field (PPEF). The uniqueness of the observed TEC variation lies in the fact that while over the mid-latitude the TEC returned to its quiet time variations after the recovery phase, the enhancement in TEC over low-latitude has been observed even after two days (anomalous increase on 22nd December) of the storm which indicates the absence of disturb dynamo electric field (DDEF) for low-latitude over 78°E longitude. The thermospheric O/N2 data obtained both from, observations as well as CTIPe model simulation are in good agreement with the observed TEC variation except for the 22nd December over the mid-latitude location. This anomalous behavior
B P. Galav
[email protected]
1
Airport Road, Bhati Abhoynagar, Agartala, West Tripura, 799002, Tripura, India
2
The Institute of Ionosphere, National Center of Space Research and Technology, Almaty, 050020, Kazakhstan
3
Plot no. 47, in front of Techno NJR Bhamashah Industrial Area, Udaipur, 313003, Rajasthan, India
on 22nd December over low-latitude could be due to some local dynamics or the transport of plasma by the background seasonal and storm time meridional winds over the studied region. Keywords Geomagnetic storm · Low and mid-latitude Ionosphere · GPS TEC · Ionosonde observation
1 Introduction Studies based on the penetration of storm time electric field and the effect thereof on ionospheric electron density have drawn the attention of many researchers for years (Sahai et al. 2007; Dashora et al. 2009; Fejer 1997; Galav et al. 2011b; Sastri 1988; Sharma et al. 2011; Paul et al. 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2020; Patari et al. 2019 and the references therein) over low-latitudes. These studies were focused on the understanding of the electrodynamical processes that are believed to be responsible for the changes in ionospheric plasma density. Many studies show that the storm time electric field that penetrates up to low-latitudes can significantly influence the plasma distribution over the eq
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