Mean ionospheric properties in winter at Zhongshan Station, Antarctica

• Main Authors: Shunlin, Liu, Longsong, He, Ruiyuan, Liu
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Polar Research Institute of China - PRIC 1997
• Subjects: Zhongshan; Zhongshan Station; Advances in Polar Science; Antarc*; Antarctica; Polar Science
• Online Access: http://library.arcticportal.org/2140/; http://library.arcticportal.org/2140/1/A702.006.pdf

Ionograms taken from a Digisonde Portable Sounder (DPS-4) at Zhongshan Station of Antarctica in 1995 are used to analyze the mean ionospheric properties in winter. The F region is rather unstable in winter and has large diurnal variation. The monthly medium value of f0F2 has a main peak around 0900UT when maximum value occurs and a sub-peak between 1300 - 1500UT. It may be affected synthetically by the low energy electron precipitation in cusp region, the high latitude plasma convection and the solar radiation, resulted in so called F region magnetic noon phenomena. Low values of f0F2 occur in post-midnight (2000 - 0100UT) when Zhongshan Station crosses the ionospheric polar hole. Sporadic E layer which caused mostly by auroral particle precipitation can be observed almost every day with the highest value of f0E8 around 1700UT. The diurnal variation of E layer is relatively smooth.