Forecasting GPS Scintillations For Low Latitude Stations, in Brazil, using Real-Time Space Weather Data.

Details Forecasting GPS Scintillations For Low Latitude Stations, in Brazil, using Real-Time Space Weather Data. Forecasting GPS Scintillations For Low Latitude Stations, in Brazil, using Real-Time Space Weather Data.

May 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agusmsa13a..07b&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2005, abstract #SA13A-07

Other

2409 Current Systems (2708), 2736 Magnetosphere/Ionosphere Interactions

Scientific paper

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a useful constellation of satellites for navigation. In low latitudes, however, the signals from these satellites are plagued with ionospheric scintillations, due to the presence of plasma irregularities in the ionosphere, between sunset and sunrise. This phenomenon occurs during approximately six months of the year, although many nights may present less scintillations or no scintillations at all. To help in finding out, in advance, which nights will be `calm', in terms of scintillations, we propose a method for predicting how frequent strong scintillations will be for a given night. To do this, firstly, we need to have at hand real time indices of space weather, which can be found at NOAA/SEC, in Boulder, Colorado or, more specifically, in their summary `Space Weather Alerts and Warnings Timeline.' Secondly, we need a measurement of the amount of scintillations, for each night, that we take to be the average scintillation index for all scintillations on all observed satellites, for that night. The scintillation index is similar to the statistical dispersion, applied to the time-series that represents the satellites signal. From all the data supplied in the NOOA/SEC timeline, we choose to use only the alerts and warnings concerning geomagnetic data, and mostly the ones related to the Kp index. The reason for choosing geomagnetic data is that the earth's magnetic field shows the effects of solar charged particles on earth, which can be measured by geo-synchronous satellites (e.g., GOES.) With these two ingredients (previous scintillation data and space-weather indices,) we show that during magnetic storms the ionosphere is quieter, with regards to scintillation on GPS signals. Then, it is possible to do the opposite: by looking at the space weather warnings, we can predict the amount of scintillation at a given night. The scintillation data used to support this method ranges from 2003 through 2005. In this work, emphasis is given to the period October-November, 2003, which contains three days used by other authors, to support an argument that is opposite to ours. Our data has been collected at a station at Natal, Brazil, located at 5.84° S and 35.20° W. The magnetic declination is 21° W and the magnetic dip is 20°.

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