Identification

Title

Global view of ionospheric disturbance impacts on kinematic GPS positioning solutions during the 2015 St. Patrick's Day storm

Abstract

The 2015 St. Patrick's Day geomagnetic storm caused numerous disturbances of the ionosphere, particularly, plasma irregularities, large-scale traveling ionospheric disturbances, and equatorial ionization anomaly enhancement. This study for the first time quantifies the global-scale impacts of the ionospheric disturbances on Global Positioning System (GPS) precise point positioning (PPP) solutions during this extreme space weather event by taking advantage of 5,500 + GNSS stations installed worldwide. The overall impact was more severe at high latitudes, while PPP degradation at low latitudes was associated with different types of ionospheric disturbances. Specifically, our results show that kinematic PPP solutions degraded following an intensified auroral particle precipitation during the storm's main phase (06-23 UT) when up to similar to 70% of the high-latitude stations experienced degraded position solutions in the multimeter range at 16-18 UT. Around magnetic noon and midnight, the storm-induced plasma irregularities caused notable PPP errors (>10 m) at high latitudes. Interhemispheric differences were observed with a more severe impact seen in the Southern Hemisphere, where PPP outage lasted for similar to 12 hr during the second main phase (12-23 UT). At low latitudes, post sunset equatorial plasma irregularities were suppressed across most longitudes, but large PPP errors (>2 m) associated with storm-induced plasma bubbles were registered at the Indian sector at 14-18 UT. The storm-induced equatorial ionization anomaly enhancement and large-scale traveling ionospheric disturbances were responsible for the low-latitude PPP degradation at dayside sectors. This study fills the research gap between physical and practical aspects of severe ionospheric storm effects.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7x92fjx

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

2020-07-20T00:00:00Z

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

Copyright 2020 American Geophysical Union.

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

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 date

2023-08-18T18:16:23.207205

Metadata language

eng; USA