Auroral Monitoring Index using a Network of GNSS Receivers

The Earth's ionized atmosphere, above 100 km altitude, and at high latitudes, experiences auroral storms driven by space weather activity. Aurorae, visible in the form of dynamic light effects, coincide with time-varying ionospheric electron density irregularities and magnetic storms. When satellite signals pass through such irregularities, rapid random fluctuations in their received phase and amplitude are observed at ground-based receivers. This is a phenomenon termed ionospheric scintillation and it can be severe enough to cause loss of availability for a number of the GNSS applications. There are also indications that ionospheric scintillation can also influence the Ionosphere-Free linear combination of carrier phase observables used in high-precision positioning, leading to degraded quality of GNSS measurements in surveying and scientific applications. In this study, we developed the auroral monitoring index (AMI) using the existing network of NMA GNSS receivers situated at European high latitudes (55 degrees N to 75 degrees N) which allows the monitoring and modeling the aurora-leffect on GNSS receivers. Further, the derived index was used for mitigating ionospheric scintillation effects during auroral storms. The auroral activities and AMI were further evaluated with scintillation activities for strong geomagnetic storm observed in 2014-15 and correlated with the phase scintillation index.