IGS ROTI Maps: Current Status and Its Extension towards Equatorial Region and Southern Hemisphere

Abstract

The International GNSS Service (IGS) diurnal ROTI maps ionospheric product was developed to characterize ionospheric irregularities occurrence over the Northern hemisphere and has been available for the community since 2014. Currently, the diurnal ROTI maps database hosted by NASA CDDIS covers the period from 2010 to now. Here, we report the ROTI maps product operational status and important changes in the product availability and access. Apart from actual ROTI maps product production, we work on the extension of ROTI maps to cover not only the Northern hemisphere but also the area of the Southern hemisphere and equatorial/low latitude region. Such extended ROTI maps are important for ionospheric irregularities climatology research and ionospheric responses to space weather. We present recent development toward the new ROTI maps product and the updated data format. To evaluate extended the ROTI maps performance, we analyzed the ability to represent key features of ionospheric irregularity occurrence over the Southern hemisphere and low latitudes. For auroral and midlatitudes, we present the cross-comparison of ROTI-derived irregularities patterns over the Northern and Southern hemispheres. For low latitudes, we examined the sensitivity of the resulted ROTI maps to detect plasma irregularities associated with equatorial plasma bubbles development for low, middle, and high solar activity periods.