The influence of space weather on ionospheric total electron content during the 23rd solar cycle

This paper presents a new empirical model for predicting the daily mean ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC) at a given latitude from only one solar index as input. For the development of the model we take advantage of the availability of 15 years of global GNSS-based TEC information and solar indices (Sunspot Number, F10.7 and derived F10.7P) including the 23rd solar cycle. Among all the tests, our preferred ionospheric climatological model to predict daily mean TEC presents yearly median differences with observed values of 1.4 +/- 0.9 TECu (11.5 +/- 2.9% for the relative differences) with no significant degradation during the different phases of the solar cycle. To realize this empirical model we used a least-square adjustment with (1) a combination of linear, annual and semi-annual terms between the TEC and F10.7P; (2) a discretization with respect to the phases of the solar cycle. The main differences between the modelled and the observed TEC occur during identified geomagnetic storms: the maximum differences (-3.2 +/- 1.5 TECu) and relative differences (-19.6 +/- 15.0%) occur one day after the storm onset. The typical time to retrieve the pre-storm conditions is 3-4 days after the onset. These results show a global picture of the effect of extreme Space Weather events on the Earth's upper atmosphere.