Large Scale TIDs climatology over Europe using HF Interferometry method

Travelling Ionospheric Disturbances (TIDs) are ionospheric irregularities that occur as plasma density fluctuations that propagate as waves through the ionosphere over a wide range of velocities and frequencies. It has been demonstrated that Large Scale TIDs (LSTID) can be detected with several ionospheric sensors such as ionosondes and their main characteristics such as velocity, direction of propagation and amplitude can be inferred.

We have applied the recent developed HF Interferometry (HF-Int) method to detect the occurrence and main characteristics of LSTIDs over Europe for different solar activities (2014 – 2019) in order to perform a climatological analysis. HF-Int determines the dominant period of oscillation and the amplitude of the LSTIDs using spectral analysis, and estimates the propagation parameters of the LSTIDs from the measured time delays of the disturbance detected at different sensor sites.

The results show that larger diurnal and seasonal occurrence of LSTID happens near sunrise hours and night-time, especially during equinox. In the morning sector, prevailing velocity propagation is westward influenced by the solar terminator effect and it also depends on the season: during winter the dominant propagation velocity is north-westward and during summer is south-westward. In the evening and night sector, the prevailing propagation velocity is southward suggesting auroral origin of the disturbance. The higher activity at night-time might be the result that neutral winds favour equatorward propagation at night whereas at day might prevent to propagate to low latitudes.

Similar behaviour has been found for high and low solar activity with the difference that during summer at low solar activity, large occurrence of sporadic E layer happens during day time. Then, ionospheric data experience large data gaps at the F region because of screening of the Es (Es Blanketing effect). This results in a poor statistic under such a conditions for daytime summer low solar activity and the number of detected LSTID is lower.