Identifying Geomagnetic Storms with Ionospheric Storm Scale for GNSS and Disaster Prevention

Abstract

This paper proposes an ionospheric storm scale (I-scale) for identifying the impact of geomagnetic or ionospheric storms in the Ionosphere for GNSS (global navigation satellite system) service and disaster prevention. The I-scale in this work is computed based on the observed foF2 at Chumphon station (10.72°N, 99.37°E) over equatorial latitude from January 2004 to July 2018. The results report that the severe geomagnetic storms, i.e., IP3 and IN3, seldom occur at Chumphon with the probabilities of 0.02% and 0.07%, respectively. The probability of quiet ionospheric condition is the maximum value of 70.73%. Meanwhile, the other I-scales sometimes occur and range from 0.60% to 13.97%. The benefits of the foF2-based I-scale are to indicate the violence level of geomagnetic storms and to announce the ionospheric irregularities in practice.