Polar electron content from GPS data-based global ionospheric maps: assessment, case studies, and climatology

Abstract

The electron content distribution of the north and south polar ionosphere from 2001 to the beginning of 2019 is analyzed by using the UQRG global ionospheric map (GIM) of vertical total electron content (VTEC), computed every 15 min by UPC-IonSAT with a tomographic-kriging combined technique. We first show that the accuracy of UQRG GIM is slightly better than that of the GIMs of other analysis centers on the whole and also over both poles. Second, we show examples of polar VTEC features in UQRG GIM, previously reported by different authors and with higher-resolution techniques. Third, by means of an unsupervised clustering algorithm, learning vector quantization, we characterize the main features of the ionospheric electron content climatology, separately for the north and south polar regions.