Low-latitude ionospheric parameters by means of genetic algorithms

D. D. CARPINTERO; É. GULARTE; J. JAEN

La Serena

Congreso; Segunda Reunión Binacional AAA-SoChiAs; 2018

Asociación Argentina de Astronomía y Sociedad Chilena de Astronomía

We have developed a new approach towards a new database of the Earth´s ionospheric parametersfoF2 and M(3000)F2. The current databases of the International Radio Consultative Committee (CCIR), usedby the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) model, and based on Fourier expansions, has been built in the60s from the available ionosondes at that time. The main goal of this work is not only to upgrade the databasefrom new available ionosondes data, but also to obtain a better fit to the observed parameters values. To thisend we used IRI diurnal/spherical expansions to represent the foF2 variability and computed its coefficients bymeans of a genetic algorithm (GA), which is capable to work in many variables and with unfavorable samples.In order to test the performance of the algorithm, we applied the proposed methodology to the equatorial andlow-latitude South American region, with data taken during the years 1996 to 2016 -that is, a period comprisingthe last two solar cycles. The new GA coefficients provide a global better fit to the observed foF2 values thanthe CCIR coefficients. The same procedure was perfomed to obtain the ionospheric parameter M(3000)F2, withsimilar results.