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Can the GPS-data-based Global Ionospheric Maps provide relevant information on the polar ionospheric electron content distribution?
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  • Manuel Hernández-Pajares,
  • Haixia Lyu,
  • Angela Aragon-Angel,
  • Enric Monte,
  • Jingbin Liu,
  • jiachun an,
  • Hu Jiang
Manuel Hernández-Pajares
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Haixia Lyu
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
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Angela Aragon-Angel
Joint Research Centre
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Enric Monte
Technical University of Catalonia
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Jingbin Liu
Finnish Geospatial Research Institute
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jiachun an
Wuhan University
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Hu Jiang
Wuhan University
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Abstract

The electron content distribution of the north and south polar ionosphere is analyzed from 2001 to the beginning of 2019 from the Global Ionospheric Maps of VTEC computed each 15 minutes by UPC-IonSAT with a tomographic-Kriging combined technique. We have found the VTEC footprint of features previously reported by different authors and with different techniques: tongues of ionization, trough and dawn-side drifting structure, flux transfer event, Theta-aurora VTEC observation at SP, and Storm enhanced density (SED) during major geomagnetic storms. Moreover, by means of an unsupervised clustering algorithm (Learning Vector Quantization), we have characterized the main features of the ionospheric electron content climatology, separately for the north and south poles. In particular a mean Tongue Of Ionization (TOI) behaviour over south polar ionosphere during 1345UT-1945UT, from November to February, i.e. in local spring and summer seasons, is confirmed in agreement with recent findings.