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Digital ionogram data
Adr. Space Res. Vol. 10. No. 8. pp. (8)127—(8)130. 1990 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved.
0273—1177/90 $0.00 + .50 © 1989 COSPAR
Copyright
DIGITAL IONOGRAM DATA B. W. Reinisch,* A. Ya. Feldstein** and H. Sizun*** University of Lowell, Center for Atmospheric Research, 450 Aiken Street, Lowell, MA 01854, U.S.A. **Soviet Geophysical Committee, WDC-B2, Molodezhnaya 3, Moscow 117296, U.S.S.R. Centre National d’Etudes des Téldcommunications, LA BIMER/SPI, B. P. 40, Route de Trégastel, 22301 Lannion, France *
** *
ABSTRACT This report summarizes the availability of digital ionogram data from the USSR and the French ionosonde stations, and from the Digisonde 256 network. Both manually generated and automatically generated data are discussed. INTRODUCTION The Ionospheric Informatics Working Group (IIWG) originally planned to report on data from digital ionosondes, but then expanded the task to include a survey on manually and semi-manually digitized data. Unfortunately, information was obtained from only a few ionosonde networks, so this data account is necessarily incomplete and should only be considered a first and modest step toward the goal of preparing a universal catalog of digital vertical sounding (VS) data. IONOSONDE NETWORK OF THE USSR Started in 1957, the USSR ionosonde network today consists of 25 VS stations that report their data to WDC B2. All ionosondes record the data in analog form and the scaled characteristics are generally not documented in computer-readable form. Tables of hourly characteristics are routinely prepared, and f-plots with 15 minute resolution are made for the Regular World Days. In 1988, WDC B2 has begun to generate computer-readable data files of hourly values for four characteristics from all Soviet stations: foF2, foFl, foE and M(3000)F2. This list will be expanded in 1989 by adding fmin, foEs, h’F2, h’F and fxl. At the present time, digital data are available in “draft form” (error control not completed) for the 27 stations listed in Table 1. WDC-B2 has developed a data format for the archiving of magnetic tape. This format was described in INAG Bulletin by WDC-C1 /1/. WDC-82 has decided not to use qualifying files of manually digitized data. The Novosibirsk station has data for 1986 and 1987.
(8)127
hourly characteristics on #44/45 and later adopted and descriptive letters in automatically digitized its
B. W. Reinisch et at.
(8)128
TABLE 1.
Available Digital VS Characteristics for Soviet Network*
Station Alma Ata Arkhangelsk Ashkhabad Gorky Irkutsk Kaliningrad Karaganda Khabarovsk Kiev Leningrad Magadan Moscow Murmansk Novokazalinsk Novosibirsk Norilsk Petropavlovik Podkamennaya Provideniya Rostov Salekhard Sverdlovsk Tashkent
Code AA343 AZ163 AS237 GK156 IR352 KL154 KR250 KB538 KVI5I LD16O MG560 M0155 MM168 NK246 NS355 N0369 PK553
Tbilisi Tomsk Yakutsk
Geo. Long. °E 76.9 40.5 583 44.3 104.0 20.6 73.1 135.1 30.5 30.7 151.0 37.3 33.0 62.1
83.2 88.1 158.7
Geo. Lat. °N 43.2 64.4 37.9 56.1 52.5 54.7 49.9 48.5 50.5 59.9 60.0 55.5 69.0 45.8 53.6 69.4
Time Interval (Years) 1957-1988 1969-1988 1957-1985 1958-1988 1957-1988 1964-1988 1964-1988 1959-1982 1964-1988 1958-1987 1968-1988 1957-1988 1957-1977 1972-1988
1969-1987 1968-1988
53.0 61.6
1968-1974 1968-1988 1957-1984
TZ362
90.0
PD664 RV149 SD266 SV256 TQ241
186.6 39.7 66.5 58.6 69.6
64.4 47.2
TB142 TK356 YA462
44.8 84.9 129.6
66.5
1957-1980 1957-1974
56.4 41.3
1957-1988 1961-1988
41.7
1963-1986 1957-1988 1957-1987
56.5
62.0
Yuzhno Sakhalinsk SA547 143.0 47.0 1957-1969 * Hourly characteristics foF2, foFi, foE, M(3000)F2; no qualifying or descriptive letters used. Some station months not available. foFI often not scaled for winter months. THE FRENCH SOUNDER NETWORK The Ionospheric Prediction Service (SPI) of the Centre National d’Etudes des Tdldcommunications (CNET) in France scales ionograms from eight ionospheric stations (Table 2). The first six stations are equipped with 1PS42 ionosondes, the last two with R4F sounders. Currently all stations record analog ionograms that are manually scaled. It is planned to acquire DBD43 digitizing units for the KEL ionosondes to enable storage of ionograms and characteristics on cassette or optical disk. When the digitizing units become available each hourly ionogram will be stored in a file containing a 256 byte header and 18,432 bytes of binary ionogram data. The header will contain the general station information and 14 ionospheric characteristics obtained by using a software-aided semi-automatic scaling technique: fmin, h’E, foE, Es Type, h’Es, foEs, fbEs, h’F, foFl, M3000F1, h’F2, foF2, M3000F2, fxl. All values have qualifying and descriptive letter according to URSI standards /2/.
Digital lonogram Data
(8)129
TABLE 2. French Vertical Sounder Network
Station Lannion Poitiers Dakar Ouagadougou La Reunion Tahiti Kerguelen Terre Adelie
Code 047 046 Al4 A12 22J 71P 24R 560
Geo. Long. °E 356.5 0.3 342.5 358.5 55.6 210.7 70.2 140.0
Geo. Lat. °N 48.8 46.6 14.8 12.4 -21.2 -17.7 -49.4 -66.7
DIGISONDE 256 NETWORK At the present time, there are 15 Digisonde 256 stations in operation and 19 more are being installed /3/. These systems automatically scale the digital ionograms and record the ionogram and the scaled data on magnetic tape (9 tracks, 1600 cpi) including 25 ionospheric characteristics (Table 3) using no qualifying and descriptive letters, h’(f) for E, Fl and F2 traces, echo amplitudes and Doppler shifts for all trace points, and the electron density profile. The US National Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, has agreed to archive the tapes from the 19 stations of the US Air Weather Service and the University of Lowell station at Millstone Hill. These data can be accessed internationally via WDC A for Solar Terrestrial Physics (STP). The IIWG encourages the idea of archiving the tapes from all Digisonde stations at WDC-A. The US Digisonde users currently keep the tapes for 2 to 4 years for potential processing or post analysis before they submit them to the Data Center. Recently, the University of Lowell group developed a new program to check and edit the autoscaled data using the Digisonde tapes (described above) as input. This ADEP program (ARTIST Data Editing and Printing), developed by Zhang /4/ runs on a PC/AT and stores the edited data on floppy disk. A simple ASCII text file format /5/ is used which is expandable, and easy to read on most computers. REFERENCES 1.
Hapgood, M. A. and H. Rishbeth (Editors), Guide to International Data Exchange
2.
Ionospheric Phenomena, WDC-C1, 1986. Piggott W. R. and K. Rawer, “URSI Handbook of lonogram Interpretation and Reduction,” World Data Center A, Report UAG-23A, 1978.
-
3.
Reinisch, B. W., R. R. Gamache and L. G. Bossy, “Ionospheric Characteristics for IRI in Real Time,” this issue.
4.
Reinisch, B. W., D. F. Kitrosser and Z. Zhang, “Real Time Ionospheric Parameters and their Display,” Proceedings of the mt. Symp. on Radio Propagation, ISRP 88, p. 169, Beijing, 1988.
5.
Gamache, R. R., Z. Zhang, T. Bullett and B. W. Reinisch, “ADEP Database Format,” Technical Note, Univ. of Lowell Center for Atmos. Res., Lowell, MA 01854, USA, April 1988.
B. W. Reinisch eta!.
(8)130
TABLE 3. ARTIST Scaled Characteristics Recorded on Magnetic Tape Scaled Characteristics foF2 foFi M(D) MUF(D) fmin foEs fminF fminE foE fxl h’F h’F2 h’E h’Es HOM
Description
Unit
F2 layer critical frequency 100 kHz F! layer critical frequency 100 kHz MUF(D)/foF2 Maximum usable frequency for distance D 100 kHz Minimum frequency for E or F echoes 100 kHz Es layer critical frequency 100 kHz Minimum frequency of F-trace 100 kHz Minimum frequency of E-trace 100 kHz E layer critical frequency 100 kHz Maximum frequency of F-trace 100 kHz Minimum virtual height of Fl trace km Minimum virtual height of F2 trace km Minimum virtual height of E trace km Minimum virtual height of Es layer km Maximum trace height of E layer using parabolic model km Ym Half thickness of E layer km Average range spread of F-trace km Average range spread of E-trace km FF Frequency spread between fxF2 and fxl 100 kHz FE As FF but considered beyond foE 100 kHz D Distance used for MUF calculationt km fMUF(D) MUF(D)/obliquity factor* 100 kHz h’MUF(D) Virtual height at fMUF km foEp Predicted foE 100 kHz f(h’F) Frequency at which hminF occurs 100 kHz f(h’F2) Frequency at which hminF2 occurs 100 kHz t Normally 3000 km * Obliquity factor(h’, D) is the ratio of frequencies for vertical and oblique propagation to distance D with virtual height h’.
0273—1177/90 $0.00 + .50 © 1989 COSPAR
Copyright
DIGITAL IONOGRAM DATA B. W. Reinisch,* A. Ya. Feldstein** and H. Sizun*** University of Lowell, Center for Atmospheric Research, 450 Aiken Street, Lowell, MA 01854, U.S.A. **Soviet Geophysical Committee, WDC-B2, Molodezhnaya 3, Moscow 117296, U.S.S.R. Centre National d’Etudes des Téldcommunications, LA BIMER/SPI, B. P. 40, Route de Trégastel, 22301 Lannion, France *
** *
ABSTRACT This report summarizes the availability of digital ionogram data from the USSR and the French ionosonde stations, and from the Digisonde 256 network. Both manually generated and automatically generated data are discussed. INTRODUCTION The Ionospheric Informatics Working Group (IIWG) originally planned to report on data from digital ionosondes, but then expanded the task to include a survey on manually and semi-manually digitized data. Unfortunately, information was obtained from only a few ionosonde networks, so this data account is necessarily incomplete and should only be considered a first and modest step toward the goal of preparing a universal catalog of digital vertical sounding (VS) data. IONOSONDE NETWORK OF THE USSR Started in 1957, the USSR ionosonde network today consists of 25 VS stations that report their data to WDC B2. All ionosondes record the data in analog form and the scaled characteristics are generally not documented in computer-readable form. Tables of hourly characteristics are routinely prepared, and f-plots with 15 minute resolution are made for the Regular World Days. In 1988, WDC B2 has begun to generate computer-readable data files of hourly values for four characteristics from all Soviet stations: foF2, foFl, foE and M(3000)F2. This list will be expanded in 1989 by adding fmin, foEs, h’F2, h’F and fxl. At the present time, digital data are available in “draft form” (error control not completed) for the 27 stations listed in Table 1. WDC-B2 has developed a data format for the archiving of magnetic tape. This format was described in INAG Bulletin by WDC-C1 /1/. WDC-82 has decided not to use qualifying files of manually digitized data. The Novosibirsk station has data for 1986 and 1987.
(8)127
hourly characteristics on #44/45 and later adopted and descriptive letters in automatically digitized its
B. W. Reinisch et at.
(8)128
TABLE 1.
Available Digital VS Characteristics for Soviet Network*
Station Alma Ata Arkhangelsk Ashkhabad Gorky Irkutsk Kaliningrad Karaganda Khabarovsk Kiev Leningrad Magadan Moscow Murmansk Novokazalinsk Novosibirsk Norilsk Petropavlovik Podkamennaya Provideniya Rostov Salekhard Sverdlovsk Tashkent
Code AA343 AZ163 AS237 GK156 IR352 KL154 KR250 KB538 KVI5I LD16O MG560 M0155 MM168 NK246 NS355 N0369 PK553
Tbilisi Tomsk Yakutsk
Geo. Long. °E 76.9 40.5 583 44.3 104.0 20.6 73.1 135.1 30.5 30.7 151.0 37.3 33.0 62.1
83.2 88.1 158.7
Geo. Lat. °N 43.2 64.4 37.9 56.1 52.5 54.7 49.9 48.5 50.5 59.9 60.0 55.5 69.0 45.8 53.6 69.4
Time Interval (Years) 1957-1988 1969-1988 1957-1985 1958-1988 1957-1988 1964-1988 1964-1988 1959-1982 1964-1988 1958-1987 1968-1988 1957-1988 1957-1977 1972-1988
1969-1987 1968-1988
53.0 61.6
1968-1974 1968-1988 1957-1984
TZ362
90.0
PD664 RV149 SD266 SV256 TQ241
186.6 39.7 66.5 58.6 69.6
64.4 47.2
TB142 TK356 YA462
44.8 84.9 129.6
66.5
1957-1980 1957-1974
56.4 41.3
1957-1988 1961-1988
41.7
1963-1986 1957-1988 1957-1987
56.5
62.0
Yuzhno Sakhalinsk SA547 143.0 47.0 1957-1969 * Hourly characteristics foF2, foFi, foE, M(3000)F2; no qualifying or descriptive letters used. Some station months not available. foFI often not scaled for winter months. THE FRENCH SOUNDER NETWORK The Ionospheric Prediction Service (SPI) of the Centre National d’Etudes des Tdldcommunications (CNET) in France scales ionograms from eight ionospheric stations (Table 2). The first six stations are equipped with 1PS42 ionosondes, the last two with R4F sounders. Currently all stations record analog ionograms that are manually scaled. It is planned to acquire DBD43 digitizing units for the KEL ionosondes to enable storage of ionograms and characteristics on cassette or optical disk. When the digitizing units become available each hourly ionogram will be stored in a file containing a 256 byte header and 18,432 bytes of binary ionogram data. The header will contain the general station information and 14 ionospheric characteristics obtained by using a software-aided semi-automatic scaling technique: fmin, h’E, foE, Es Type, h’Es, foEs, fbEs, h’F, foFl, M3000F1, h’F2, foF2, M3000F2, fxl. All values have qualifying and descriptive letter according to URSI standards /2/.
Digital lonogram Data
(8)129
TABLE 2. French Vertical Sounder Network
Station Lannion Poitiers Dakar Ouagadougou La Reunion Tahiti Kerguelen Terre Adelie
Code 047 046 Al4 A12 22J 71P 24R 560
Geo. Long. °E 356.5 0.3 342.5 358.5 55.6 210.7 70.2 140.0
Geo. Lat. °N 48.8 46.6 14.8 12.4 -21.2 -17.7 -49.4 -66.7
DIGISONDE 256 NETWORK At the present time, there are 15 Digisonde 256 stations in operation and 19 more are being installed /3/. These systems automatically scale the digital ionograms and record the ionogram and the scaled data on magnetic tape (9 tracks, 1600 cpi) including 25 ionospheric characteristics (Table 3) using no qualifying and descriptive letters, h’(f) for E, Fl and F2 traces, echo amplitudes and Doppler shifts for all trace points, and the electron density profile. The US National Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, has agreed to archive the tapes from the 19 stations of the US Air Weather Service and the University of Lowell station at Millstone Hill. These data can be accessed internationally via WDC A for Solar Terrestrial Physics (STP). The IIWG encourages the idea of archiving the tapes from all Digisonde stations at WDC-A. The US Digisonde users currently keep the tapes for 2 to 4 years for potential processing or post analysis before they submit them to the Data Center. Recently, the University of Lowell group developed a new program to check and edit the autoscaled data using the Digisonde tapes (described above) as input. This ADEP program (ARTIST Data Editing and Printing), developed by Zhang /4/ runs on a PC/AT and stores the edited data on floppy disk. A simple ASCII text file format /5/ is used which is expandable, and easy to read on most computers. REFERENCES 1.
Hapgood, M. A. and H. Rishbeth (Editors), Guide to International Data Exchange
2.
Ionospheric Phenomena, WDC-C1, 1986. Piggott W. R. and K. Rawer, “URSI Handbook of lonogram Interpretation and Reduction,” World Data Center A, Report UAG-23A, 1978.
-
3.
Reinisch, B. W., R. R. Gamache and L. G. Bossy, “Ionospheric Characteristics for IRI in Real Time,” this issue.
4.
Reinisch, B. W., D. F. Kitrosser and Z. Zhang, “Real Time Ionospheric Parameters and their Display,” Proceedings of the mt. Symp. on Radio Propagation, ISRP 88, p. 169, Beijing, 1988.
5.
Gamache, R. R., Z. Zhang, T. Bullett and B. W. Reinisch, “ADEP Database Format,” Technical Note, Univ. of Lowell Center for Atmos. Res., Lowell, MA 01854, USA, April 1988.
B. W. Reinisch eta!.
(8)130
TABLE 3. ARTIST Scaled Characteristics Recorded on Magnetic Tape Scaled Characteristics foF2 foFi M(D) MUF(D) fmin foEs fminF fminE foE fxl h’F h’F2 h’E h’Es HOM
Description
Unit
F2 layer critical frequency 100 kHz F! layer critical frequency 100 kHz MUF(D)/foF2 Maximum usable frequency for distance D 100 kHz Minimum frequency for E or F echoes 100 kHz Es layer critical frequency 100 kHz Minimum frequency of F-trace 100 kHz Minimum frequency of E-trace 100 kHz E layer critical frequency 100 kHz Maximum frequency of F-trace 100 kHz Minimum virtual height of Fl trace km Minimum virtual height of F2 trace km Minimum virtual height of E trace km Minimum virtual height of Es layer km Maximum trace height of E layer using parabolic model km Ym Half thickness of E layer km Average range spread of F-trace km Average range spread of E-trace km FF Frequency spread between fxF2 and fxl 100 kHz FE As FF but considered beyond foE 100 kHz D Distance used for MUF calculationt km fMUF(D) MUF(D)/obliquity factor* 100 kHz h’MUF(D) Virtual height at fMUF km foEp Predicted foE 100 kHz f(h’F) Frequency at which hminF occurs 100 kHz f(h’F2) Frequency at which hminF2 occurs 100 kHz t Normally 3000 km * Obliquity factor(h’, D) is the ratio of frequencies for vertical and oblique propagation to distance D with virtual height h’.