Publication Date:
2013-09-01
Description:
[1] For the past decade, the paucity of ionospheric observations has made it almost impossible to reconstruct the three-dimensional structures of global ionospheric electron density. The FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC (F3/C) constellation has provided ionospheric electron density profiles with high vertical resolution through radio occultation measurements. Slated for deployment starting in 2016, the FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 (F7/C2) constellation will further provide more than four times the number of the F3/C occultation soundings. An observing system simulation experiment is conducted to determine the impact of F7/C2 on ionospheric weather monitoring. The results first show that the F7/C2 observations can reconstruct 3D ionospheric structure with a data accumulation period of one hour, which can advance studies of small spatial/temporal scale variation/signatures in the ionosphere. Comparing to assimilation results of F3/C, the assimilation system significantly reduces the error arising in the models and observations after assimilating synthetic observations of F7/C2. During this OSSE period, the averaged root-mean-square error percentage for the results of F7/C2 is about 4.4%, lower than that of F3/C 7.3%. Furthermore, even with an assimilation window of less than 60 minutes, the F7/C2 RMSEs still yield reliable values compared to the F3/C results. This paper represents a major advance in ionospheric weather monitoring for the future mission.
Print ISSN:
0148-0227
Topics:
Geosciences
,
Physics
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