An Investigation of Turbulence and Intermittency in the High-Latitude Ionosphere: A Multi Case Study

Abstract

High-latitude electron density irregularities can affect technology such as the Global Navigation Satellite Services (GNSS) by degrading radio signals. These irregularities are not fully understood. In this work we investigate turbulence and intermittency in varying regions of the high- latitude ionosphere using the structure function, empirical flatness and probability density function. Our aim is to investigate whether these turbulence data analysis tools can reveal additional information about the nature of these phenomenons in the selected regions. We apply these methods on 16 Hz electron density Swarm data across the polar cap and auroral regions in the northern hemisphere. We observed different slopes at large and small scales for the structure function in the polar cap and across the entire polar region. We also noticed a clear difference between the results during days of high and low geomagnetic activity. However, we could not observe any significant differences in the auroral region using this method. Furthermore, the results obtained by measuring the empirical flatness and probability density function remain inconclusive as we did not notice any substantial differences in either region or across the different geomagnetic levels. Our results suggest at least some different scaling behaviour across the entire polar region and polar cap which is affected by geomagnetic storms, but further investigation is required to establish any additional details about turbulence and intermittency.