All Physics Faculty Presentations

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Geophysical Research Letters

Volume

46

Issue

19

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc.

Publication Date

10-15-2019

Award Number

NSF, Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences 1441774

Funder

NSF, Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences

First Page

10726

Last Page

10734

Abstract

Much theoretical and observational work has been devoted to studying the occurrence of F region polar cap patches in the Northern Hemisphere; considerably less work has been applied to the Southern Hemisphere. In recent years, the Madrigal database of mappings of total electron content (TEC) has improved in Southern Hemisphere coverage, to the point that we can now carry out a study of patch frequency and occurrence. We find that Southern Hemisphere patch occurrence is very similar to that of the Northern Hemisphere with a half‐year offset, plus an offset in universal time of approximately 12 hr. This is further supported by running an ionospheric model for both hemispheres and applying the same patch‐to‐background technique. Further, we present a simple physical mechanism involving a sunlit dayside plasma source concurrent with a dark polar cap, which yields a patch‐to‐background pattern very much like that seen in the TEC mappings for both hemispheres.

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