Identification

Title

Global characteristics of occurrence of an additional layer in the ionosphere observed by COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3

Abstract

Global observations of electron density profile (EDP) from the COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 satellites were used to investigate, for the first time, the additional stratification of the F2 layer over the equatorial ionosphere on a global scale, which is called F3 layer. The F3 layer in EDP was recognized through the altitude differential profile featured by two maxima existing from 220 km to the peak height of the electron density. There were ~9,400 cases of F3 layer selected out of ~448, 000 occultation events at low and equatorial areas during the period of April 2006 - September 2010. Statistical results show that the highest occurrence of F3 layer appears at dip latitude 7~8°/−7~−8° for Northern/Southern Hemisphere and is more pronounced during summer months at 10:00 - 14:00 LT. The occurrence also has a clear longitude dependence during boreal summer, with relatively higher occurrence at −80~−100°, −20~20°, 80~120° and −160~−170° longitudes, that is possibly associated with the wavenumber-3 diurnal tide (DE3). The results support the principle of the F3 layer proposed by Balan et al. (1998), which in turn validate the accuracy of the retrieval of the COSMIC EDP data.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7t43vcc

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2011-01-19T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact