All scientific data collected by the Australian Antarctic program (AAp) are eventually described in the Catalogue of Australian Antarctic and Subantarctic Metadata (CAASM). CAASM can be used to search through AAp data descriptions, and it also provides links to access publicly available datasets, which can either be immediately downloaded or obtained from the Australian Antarctic Data Centre (AADC).

Citation
Dyson, P. (2015) Mapping the GPS total electron content and scintillation activity at southern higher latitudes during high sunspot numbers, Ver. 1, Australian Antarctic Data Centre - doi:10.4225/15/54AB59F883662, Accessed: 2026-08-20
Title
Mapping the GPS total electron content and scintillation activity at southern higher latitudes during high sunspot numbers
Data Centre
Australian Antarctic Data Centre, Australia
DOI
doi:10.4225/15/54AB59F883662
Created Date
2000-08-09
Revision Date
2017-04-26
Expected Date of Data Release
2015-01-06
Data Version
1
Parent record
None

Description

Metadata record for data from ASAC Project 1121
See the link below for public details on this project.

---- Public Summary from Project ----
Improved knowledge on the state of the ionosphere in the higher latitudes is important for communications and navigation purposes. Ionospheric scintillations, the rapid variations in amplitude and phase of radio signals resulting from irregularities in the ionosphere, can have significant effects on signals from satellites around sunspot maximum which is expected to peak in the year 2000. This project aims to improve our understanding of both the ionisation content variability in the higher latitude upper atmosphere and the scintillation occurrences and their effect on signals from satellites such as GPS and the mobile satellite phones.

Data were collected from Casey and Davis stations in the Australian Antarctic Territory, and Macquarie Island in the Southern Ocean.

Raw and processed datasets are included.

Data explanations:

This is a fragment from a program that was used to convert the raw files into a more usable form;

scin_temp.fieldnames=['week','time','prn','warm','azi','elev','cno','s4tot', 's4cor','s1','s3','s10','s30','s60','cdiv','sdiv','spect','phaset','k0','k1' ,'k2','k3']

Column 1; week - is GPS week number. This is the number of weeks that have elapsed since the GPS week rollover which was week beginning 22/8/99.

Column 2; time - time in seconds since the start of the week

Column 3; prn - GPS satellite PRN number - each satellite has a unique code

Column 4; warm - Satellite Lock time (seconds) (not sure about this one - this may be something else)

Column 5; azi - Satellite's current azimuth angle (degrees)

Column 6; elev - Satellite's current elevation angle (degrees)

Column 7; cno - C / No (dB/Hz) (don't know what this is used for)

Column 8; s4tot - S4 index (a standard scaled measure of amplitude scintillation activity) (dimensionless)

Column 9; s4cor - S4 index corrected to take into account the elevation angle of the satellite. (dimensionless)

Column10; s1 - phase sigma index 1 second averaged (radians)

Column11; s3 - phase sigma index 3 second averaged (radians)

Column12; s10 - phase sigma index 10 second averaged (radians)

Column13; s30 - phase sigma index 30 second averaged (radians)

Column14; s60 - phase sigma index 60 second averaged (radians)

Column15; cdiv - Average of Code/Carrier divergence (meters)

Column16; sdiv - Sigma of Code/Carrier divergence (meters)

Column17; spect - Phase spectral strength T (dB)

Column18; phaset - Phase spectral slope P (dB)

Column19; k0 - Amplitude Spectrum K0 (dB)

Column20; k1 - Amplitude Spectrum K1 (dB)

Column21; k2 - Amplitude Spectrum K2 (dB)

Column22; k3 - Amplitude Spectrum K3 (dB)

Show more...

Quality

Dates provided in temporal coverage are approximate only.
Note that this project was inherited by the investigator as a result of two other scientists passing away. Hence, some uncertainties may exist with data interpretation.

Access

These data are publicly available for download from the provided URL.

Temporal Coverages

Spatial Coverages

Science Keywords

Additional Keywords

  • Electron content
  • scintillation

Locations

  • OCEAN > SOUTHERN OCEAN
  • OCEAN > SOUTHERN OCEAN
  • CONTINENT > ANTARCTICA > DAVIS
  • CONTINENT > ANTARCTICA > CASEY
  • GEOGRAPHIC REGION > POLAR

Platforms

  • FIXED OBSERVATION STATIONS

Instruments

    None

Researchers

  • dyson, peter (INVESTIGATOR,TECHNICAL CONTACT,DIF AUTHOR)

Use Constraints

This data set conforms to the CCBY Attribution License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Please follow instructions listed in the citation reference provided at http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/citation.cfm?entry_id=ASAC_1121 when using these data.

Project

    ISO Topic

    • GEOSCIENTIFIC INFORMATION

    Dataset Language

    • ENGLISH

    Orignating Centre

    • Australian Antarctic Division

    Dataset Progress

    • COMPLETE

    IDN Node

    • AMD/AU
    • CEOS
    • AMD

    Metadata Revision History

      2014-12-23 - record updated by Dave Connell - basic updates. 2015-01-06 - record updated by Dave Connell to publicly release the data.

    Creative Commons License