dc.description.abstract | The tiny ionosphere photometer (TIP) of FORMOSAT3/COSMIC (F3/C) and the Global Ultraviolet Imager (GUVI) of Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energy and Dynamics (TIMED) are employed to measure the nighttime OI 1356Å airglow emissions. On the other hand, the GPS occultation experiment (GOX) onboard F3/C daily derive 2,500 vertical profiles of the ionospheric electron density, while the Global Ionospheric Maps (GIM) routinely publishes the total electron content (TEC) from a GPS satellite to a ground-based receiver.
A conversion factor for various local times, seasons and solar activities is obtained by cross comparing between observations of TIP/GUVI 1356Å airglow emissions, GIM TEC, GOX IEC (integrated electron content), GOX NmF2 (F2-peak electron density) and simulations of IRI-01 and MSISE-00 models. Based on the conversion factor, the assimilation between the ionospheric 1356Å airglow emission and electron density can be carried out for the development of a new space-based tomography.
Meanwhile, the airglow emissions and electron density are utilized to monitor large scale structures and variations of the equatorial ionization anomaly, plasma cave, non-migrating tide, plasma depletion bay and Weddell Sea anomaly, and to understand the associated physical mechanisms. Results demonstrate that the combination observations of the OI 1356Å airglow emission and vertical electron density profiles provide a powerful tool to probe the large scale structures of the nighttime ionosphere, while the data assimilation sheds some lights on developing a TIP-GOX space-based tomography. | en_US |