Comparing Atomic Oxygen Emission Observed by GOLD with Ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC)
Visualizations by
Tom Bridgman
Released on August 30, 2021
Here we compare the enhanced ionospheric emission by atomic oxygen (OI at 135.6nm) observed by the GOLD instrument (right panel) with measured total electron content (TEC, Wikipedia) measured through the NAVSTAR GPS system (left panel).
The oxygen emission and TEC are both enhanced in two bands known as the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA) or Appleton anomaly, that straddle Earth's geomagnetic equator. The Appleton anomaly is formed by a process known as the Equatorial Fountain.
This visualization illustrates the motion of these bands on a global scale over a time scale of a few hours, a capability not available until the GOLD mission.
Observed Data - 2018-11-19T20:10UT to 2018-11-19T23:25UT
Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) is an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph to measure temperatures and densities in the Earth's thermosphere & ionosphere.
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0