Multi-Site Tomographic Imaging and Characterization of Ionospheric Disturbances

New instruments and imaging techniques for observing ionospheric disturbances will enable new insights into the physical processes driving the behavior of the irregularities. Two SSI Little Imagers have been deployed in late 2015 in Puerto Rico at Arecibo and Culebra to observe the ionosphere at 630.0 nm. The overlapping stereo geometry allows for three-dimensional imaging of the electron density structure using tomographic reconstruction techniques. A multi-year effort to recover three-dimensional structure of MSTIDs will help determine if plasma transport is dominated by neutral winds or electrodynamics.

Tomographic forward and inversion models have been developed along with appropriate regularization techniques to reconstruct a three-dimensional image from the stereo observations. Algorithms to extract TID wave parameters from two-dimensional and three-dimensional maps of electron density allow for automated processing and characterization of years of imager data. Here we describe the tomographic imaging technique and TID characterization algorithms. We also present case studies of characterized disturbance waves along with comparisons with collocated ionospheric observations.