Tomographic Reconstruction of the Low-Latitude Nighttime Electron Density Using FORMOSAT-3/COMSIC Radio Occultation and UV Photometer Data

Abstract

The Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC) is a constellation of six microsatellites that was launched into low-Earth orbit on 14 April 2006. Each FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC satellite contains a GPS Occultation Experiment (GOX) GPS receiver and a Tiny Ionospheric Photometer (TIP), which measure the ionosphere. In previous papers of Dymond and Thomas (2001) and Dymond et al. (2000), an algorithm for tomographically inverting GPS occultation and UV radiometer measurements has been presented. We apply this algorithm to the inversion of recently acquired FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC data and present the results.

Keywords

• Ionosphere
• Tomography
• FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC
• Appelton anomaly