Modeling Large Scale Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances Observed Using Amateur Radio Networks with PyLAP/PHaRLAP and SAMI3/SD-WACCM-X

Large Scale Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances (LSTIDs) are variations of the ionospheric electron density with periods in the range of 30 to 180 minutes and horizontal wavelengths greater than 1000 km. LSTIDs affect high-frequency (HF, 3-30 MHz) radio waves propagating through the ionosphere by causing periodic fading and varying the skip distance of the radio waves returning to Earth. This phenomenon has been demonstrated using both Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) amateur radio observations and SuperDARN radar data. To better understand the physics behind these observations, we use the physics-based SAMI3 ionospheric model driven by SD-WACCM-X to simulate the ionosphere on 3 November 2017, a period when a significant LSTID was observed over the continental United States by both amateur radio and SuperDARN. The model results are fed into the PyLAP/PHaRLAP ionospheric raytracing toolkit in order to model the amateur radio and SuperDARN LSTID observations.