Space Weather Effects on GPS Scintillation at Middle Latitudes

Global climatology and characteristics of mid-latitude GPS scintillation has been historically neglected, despite occasional reports of scintillation events. We leverage the UNAVCO 1-Hz database containing ~>500 receivers located in the American longitudinal sector between 30 < |MLAT| < 60 degree. We extract proxy scintillation parameters utilizing high frequency fluctuations of Total Electron Content (TEC), and Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). We present statistics, and characteristics of derived GPS scintillation maps, classified by magnetic activity. We find that mid-latitude scintillation is rather frequent, most severe during magnetically active periods, however present also at quiet times. The results are obtained in a period of solar minimum, 2017 and 2018, showing a variety of different space weather effects. Some events significantly degraded GPS positioning, despite the geomagnetic indices mark the storms to be moderate at best. We validate GPS scintillation occurrence with in-situ measurements by the Swarm spacecraft, that reaffirm the GPS scintillation observations. We find the mid-latitude scintillation to be intimately linked to the mid-latitude peculiar plasma instabilities.