Articles | Volume 8
https://doi.org/10.5194/ars-8-225-2010
https://doi.org/10.5194/ars-8-225-2010
01 Oct 2010
 | 01 Oct 2010

Sporadic E signatures revealed from multi-satellite radio occultation measurements

C. Arras, C. Jacobi, J. Wickert, S. Heise, and T. Schmidt

Abstract. Radio occultation measurements performed by the satellites CHAMP, GRACE and FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC provide a huge data set for atmospheric and ionospheric investigations on a global scale. The data sets are used to extract information on sporadic E layers appearing in the lower ionospheric E region. This is done by analyzing signal amplitude variations of the GPS L1 signal. Sporadic E altitudes in northern midlatitudes found from radio occultation measurements are compared with ground-based ionosonde soundings. A large correlation of sporadic E altitudes from these two techniques is found.

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