Experiment: Topside Ionosphere and Plasmasphere

This experiment was built to check the quality of the models to represent the topside ionosphere and plasmasphere.

The following models have been already evaluated:

None

A summarized comparison between them will be shown in the Model Comparison section.

Configurations

Data for the entire years of 2008 and 2014 are included in the experiment.

Input Data

There is no specific input data one should use. The only restriction is to not use the data from the Van Allen Probes or any other data in the section "Validation Data".

Validation Data 2014 - High Solar Activity

Anyone interested to carry out a model evaluation, can run the model for the dataset shown in the Table.

The validation is made in terms of Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) maps and electron density (Ne) in-situ measurements. After running the model, output files should be created exactly equal to the input files bellow, however, with new columns, corresponding to the obtained Ne or VTEC values obtained by the user model. Results shared with DIME will be included online if approved by the user. See the table below to download the data to validate. More details to share data in the Guideline.

VTEC was computed based on the mapping function shown at Zhong et al. (2016). We have used the F&K model given by Equation (3) adopting the single-layer height at 1300 km. To minimize errors, we have neglected negative VTEC values and used only data above 40 degrees elevation angle. Notice that TECU refers to TEC Units (1 TECU=10^16 el/m^2)

Reference

Zhong, J., Lei, J., Dou, X. et al. Assessment of vertical TEC mapping functions for space-based GNSS observations. GPS Solut 20, 353–362 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-015-0444-6