Ionospheric Global and Regional Electron Contents in Solar Cycles 23–25

Abstract

The Earth’s ionosphere experiences forcing from above and below and varies in different periods. We analyzed the dynamics of the ionospheric global and regional electron contents (GEC and REC) in solar cycles 23/24 (SC23/SC24) and the first part of solar cycle 25 (SC25). We considered several methodological issues for GEC calculations and created a tool to compute GEC and made it available through SIMuRG (System for Ionosphere Monitoring and Research from GNSS). The paper shows the asymmetry of GEC dynamics in different solar cycles. The mid-latitude summer evening anomaly disrupted the diurnal REC variation in the Siberian region under solar minima. The mean GEC showed similar dependence on the F10.7 index in SC25 and SC23/SC24. The difference in solar cycles could prevent reliable forecasting for GEC for the next solar cycle. Our model, based on a neural network, could predict GEC dynamics in SC25 accurately when we input the F10.7 index.