Evaluation of the IRI-2012 model during intense geomagnetic storms

MARIANO FAGRE; ZENÓN SAAVEDRA; GERARDO L. FLORES IVALDI; ANA G. ELIAS; MIGUEL A. CABRERA

Bangkok

Workshop; International Reference Ionosphere 2015 Workshop; 2015

COSPAR/URSI-IRI, King Mongkut?s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL)

Intense geomagnetic storms impact the ionosphere causing severe disturbances which, in turn, can affect a wide range of radio systems on which worldwide societies and economies are increasingly dependent. In fact, telecommunications, aircraft safety, navigation and surveillance systems, for example, rely on signals propagating through the ionosphere. So, a continuous ionosphere monitoring is essential, as well as the ability to predict irregularities and disturbances that may affect these systems. The problem of forecasting ionospheric disturbances associated with geomagnetic storms is still a highly topical and complex issue, and IRI-2012 model is a tool very useful for this purpose. Often foF2 ionosonde records present big gaps during an intense perturbation of this kind. For this reason in the present work IRI-2012 foF2 predictions during geomagnetic storms that reached values of DST less than -250 nT are analyzed. For selected mid and high latitude stations experimental foF2 is compared to IRI-2012 output with the empirical ionospheric storm correction model STORM and without it. At the beginning of the storm and during the recovery phase the IRI model with storm correction has a very good agreement with experimental data from the stations aforementioned. Since in many statistical analysis complete data series are needed, IRI-2012 would provide a highly acceptable method to interpolate foF2 missing data in these cases.