The Impact of a TEC-driven Servo on an Ionospheric Model—Weather-level Simulations and a Quantitative Value for the Plasmaspheric Contribution to TEC

The Time-Dependent Ionospheric Model (TDIM) is a physics-based model that solves the transport equations and outputs various simulated ionospheric parameters such as electron peak density (N_mF₂), electron peak height (h_mF₂), and total electron count (TEC). This presentation focuses on the results of the TDIM used in conjunction with a servo that used GPS collected TEC as input. The TEC-driven servo with TDIM is referred to as TST. The TST simulated N_mF₂ values were compared to actual N_mF₂ obtained from ionosonde-collected data. The comparison was done for a few geomagnetically quiet and solar medium days of July 2017 at four midlatitude locations. This comparison demonstrated that TST has the capability to simulate weather-level and location-based N_mF₂ fluctuations, but is limited in that it consistently overestimates the N_mF₂ value. This overestimate is attributed to the plasmaspheric contribution to TEC. A preliminary means to correct for the model’s overestimate and determine a location-specific numerical value for plasmaspheric TEC has been determined