On the potential applicability of the simplified ionospheric regional model to different midlatitude areas

Abstract

The simplified ionospheric regional model (SIRM) was originally developed for modeling the most relevant ionospheric characteristics over Europe for radiocommunication purposes. The model, based mainly on the Fourier expansion of a reference past data set, is here adapted and applied to different sets of dishomogeneous periods of observed data coming from a sparse network of ionospheric stations in midlatitude areas, that is, northeastern North America, southeastern South America, northeast Asia, and southeast Australia. Notwithstanding the simple SIRM formulation and the reduced number of numerical coefficients involved, a good agreement has been found between modeled and observed monthly median values of ƒ 0 F 2 and M (3000) F 2 under different heliogeophysical conditions.