On the different International Reference Ionosphere topside options: a comparison with altimeter-derived TEC data

NAVA, B.; PIGNALBERI ALESSIO; AZPILICUETA F.; PEZZOPANE M.

Workshop; IRI 2023 Workshop; 2023

IRI

In this work, we perform a comparison between the vertical Total Electron Content (TEC) values modeled by the last version of the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI-2020) model and the corresponding TEC values derived from altimeter satellites. IRI-2020 provides the modeled TEC through numerical integration of the vertical electron density profile. Up to the altimeter height (1360 km), IRI-2020 describes the topside part of the ionosphere, i.e., the region extending from the F2-layer peak to the overlying plasmasphere, through four topside options based on different sub-models. It is understood that all the four IRI-2020 topside option have been considered, keeping unchanged the bottomside profile. The data used in this study are TEC over the oceans measured using the dual-frequency radar onboard the TOPEX and Jason 1 altimeter satellites. They span the period 2000 – 2011 and cover different diurnal, seasonal, and solar activity conditions.The data analysis has been based on the stati…The comparison with measured TEC values allowed us to investigate (assess?) which IRI topside option performs better in describing the TEC values and variations, for different helio-geophysical conditions.In particular, the relative frequency distributions of the difference between the modelled and the corresponding altimeter-derived TEC data indicated that all topside options perform in a similar way, above all during year.