Spatial TEC gradients for moderate-to-severe geomagnetic storms for an Eastern North-Atlantic Midlatitudinal Zone

The UQRG (from 2015, 15 min cadence) and UPCG (before 2015, 2 hours cadence) GIMs were downloaded from CDDIS (The Crustal Dynamics Data Information System, https://cddis.nasa.gov/archive/gnss/products/ionex/). The maps were cropped accordingly to the Eastern North-Atlantic Midlatitudinal Zone (Eastern North-Atlantic Midlatitudinal Zone.jpg) boundaries.

A scheme described in (Liu, Q., Hernández‐Pajares, M., Yang, H., Monte‐Moreno, E., García‐Rigo, A., Lyu, H., Olivares‐Pulido, G. and Orús‐Pérez, R. (2022) A New Way of Estimating the Spatial and Temporal Components of the Vertical Total Electron Content Gradient Based on UPC‐IonSAT Global Ionosphere Maps. Space Weather, 20(2), p.e2021SW002926) was used to calculate TEC gradients for each of gridpoints, then the full map averaged TEC gradients, the latitudinal averaged TEC gradients and TEC gradients for specific locations were calculated for certain months (GMs_gradients.png). The studied months were selected as ones containing moderate-to-severe geomagnetic storms (Dst ≤ -150 nT).

The animations show TEC gradients evolution during selected days around a geomagnetic storm.