the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 19 Feb 2021
Characteristics of Ionospheric Scintillation in Chengdu, China
Abstract. When wireless electromagnetic waves pass through the earth's atmosphere, they are affected by ionospheric irregularities, and their amplitude and phase will jitter rapidly in a short period of time, which is called ionospheric scintillation. With the human exploration of outer space and the demand for space communication, the study of ionospheric scintillation characteristics and its influence on electromagnetic communication has become increasingly important. This paper used the observation data received by GPS scintillation/TEC receivers in the Chengdu (104.07° N, 30.67° E) area of China from January 2018 to September 2020, and a data processing program was developed for the received GPS/BDS/GAL. The satellite data at multiple frequency points were processed to extract key data such as S4, azimuth angle, and elevation angle, and then the annual changes in ionospheric scintillation in the Chengdu region and the characteristics of local time changes were statistically analysed. The results show that the frequency and intensity of ionospheric scintillation events have obvious half-year changes. The scintillation intensity and frequency in spring and autumn are higher and more frequent than those in summer and winter; and scintillation events mainly occur at night. but they also occur during the day, mostly in the afternoon; and their occurrence is related to the airspace and is further closely related to the elevation and azimuth angles of the observation point. The overall scintillation events from 2018 to 2020 were in a gradual downward trend. At the end of May 2018, a scintillation event with a longer duration occurred. Further analysis showed that the occurrence of scintillation events increased with the rapid changes in solar activity and the geomagnetic environment. There is a certain positive correlation between the changes.
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RC1: 'Comment on angeo-2021-13', Anonymous Referee #1, 15 Mar 2021
This paper focuses the spatiotemporal characteristics of ionospheric scintillation in Southwest China by examined the GPS data recording from January 2018 to September 2020 in Chengdu. The results illustrate that the ionospheric scintillation events show a seasonal and diurnal distribution pattern, and more frequently occur at an azimuth angle of 120°-200°, the strong scintillation events take place at an azimuth angle of 160° and 40°. Basically, the information presented is useful to the community and should be published after major revisions and clarification. The list of some revisions and clarifications is suggested as below, especially lots of clarifications should be necessary.
- Usually, those abbreviation, for example GPS/BDS/GAL (including but not limited to), need clarification in scientific publication.
- Some statements should be clarified. What is the difference between the frequency ionospheric scintillation events, the incidence of ionospheric scintillation, the occurrence of ionospheric scintillation, the occurrence rate of ionospheric scintillation events, the scintillation rates and the probability of occurrence of ionospheric scintillation events, which may confuse readers.
- In line 90, the two functions are in duplicate? In the S4 formula, what is <SI'2>? They share the same dimension? It should is <SI'2>?
- Those abscissas in Figs. 1 and 2 should be consistent with each other (including but not limited to).
- Fig. 2 is computed by function 2? It may confuse reader.
- Similar to comment 2, what is the scintillation rates in line 149?
- In line152-157, the wind field can be measured in Chengdu? If so, the measurement of wind field may significantly support the discussion and improve this paper.
- What is the abscissa of Fig.7? The title of Fig.7 is 2018-5, whereas the abscissa of Fig.7 is month of year? The writing may confuse reader.
- In Fig 8, what parameter does the scale colorbar note? It should be noted.
- In Abstract section, author writes " a data processing program was developed". Thus, the developed program should be stated in detail, and what is new?
- English should be improved, for instance, "Ionospheric amplitude scintillation is the amplitude change caused by the electromagnetic wave signal passing through the ionosphere." (including but not limited to). Indeed, amplitude scintillation should not be caused by the electromagnetic wave, but by the iohospheric irregularity.
- In line 113, what is "abnormal occurrences of ionospheric scintillation"? which needs clarifications (including but not limited to).
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-2021-13-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Hailong Li, 18 Mar 2021
Thank you very much for your review. According to your question, I have modified and clarified some of the issues. One of the documents has traces of revision and the other is reply. The specific response is as follows.
- Usually, those abbreviation, for example GPS/BDS/GAL (including but not limited to), need clarification in scientific publication.
Reply: These abbreviations stand for Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS). I modified the relevant part of the article.
- Some statements should be clarified. What is the difference between the frequency ionospheric scintillation events, the incidence of ionospheric scintillation, the occurrence of ionospheric scintillation, the occurrence rate of ionospheric scintillation events, the scintillation rates and the probability of occurrence of ionospheric scintillation events, which may confuse readers.
Reply: There are indeed some problems in the translation. I have modified all the sentences that may cause confusion.
- In line 90, the two functions are in duplicate? In the S4 formula, what is <SI'2>? They share the same dimension? It should is <SI'2>?
Reply: The function has been duplicated and has been modified and deleted. In the S4 formula, your guess is correct, and I have also modified it.
- Those abscissas in Figs. 1 and 2 should be consistent with each other (including but not limited to).
Reply: The abscissas in the figure refer to the local time, including the following format, which have been revised and unified.
- 2 is computed by function 2? It may confuse reader.
Reply: Fig.2 is completely calculated by function 2. According to your suggestion, I explained in the article.
- Similar to comment 2, what is the scintillation rates in line 149?
Reply: The description of the scintillation rates here is inaccurate and has been modified in the text.
- In line152-157, the wind field can be measured in Chengdu? If so, the measurement of wind field may significantly support the discussion and improve this paper.
Reply: Unfortunately, because there is no relevant measurement equipment, there is no historical measurement data of the wind field in Chengdu. This part of the research is based on the research results of other scholars. Related references are as follows:
[1] Liu, Libo et al., 2003. Seasonal behavior of equivalent winds over Wuhan derived from ionospheric data in 2000–2001. Advances in space research, 32(9), pp.1765–1770.
[2] Luan, X et al., 2004. A climatology of the F-layer equivalent winds derived from ionosonde measurements over two decades along the 120°-150°E sector, Ann. Geophys., 22, 2785–2796, https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-22-2785-2004.
- What is the abscissa of Fig.7? The title of Fig.7 is 2018-5, whereas the abscissa of Fig.7 is month of year? The writing may confuse reader.
Reply: The abscissa refers to the day of the month, the error here has been modified.
- In Fig 8, what parameter does the scale colorbar note? It should be noted.
Reply: The color scale represents the level of S4 value, which is marked in the figure.
- In Abstract section, author writes " a data processing program was developed". Thus, the developed program should be stated in detail, and what is new?
Reply: Developed a batch processing program for processing ionospheric scintillation data. It is a GUI software that can realize data error removal, automatic correction, automatic drawing, batch processing and other functions. This part is supplemented in the text.
- English should be improved, for instance, "Ionospheric amplitude scintillation is the amplitude change caused by the electromagnetic wave signal passing through the ionosphere." (including but not limited to). Indeed, amplitude scintillation should not be caused by the electromagnetic wave, but by the iohospheric irregularity.
Reply: According to your suggestion, this part of the narrative in the text has been re-expressed.
- In line 113, what is "abnormal occurrences of ionospheric scintillation"? which needs clarifications (including but not limited to).
Reply: The statement is wrong, it should be an ionospheric anomaly or an ionospheric scintillation event, which has been modified.
Thank you again for pointing out the mistakes in the article, so that I can express the research content more accurately.
-
RC2: 'Comment on angeo-2021-13', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 May 2021
The work presents little contribution to the area and the results present very superficial discussions and without any geophysical contextualization that would be necessary. This article needs a huge major revision. My main concern is the fact that there are S4 records outside of nighttime. For me it shows that the database of this work has to be reviewed more carefully and perhaps it is damaged and cannot be used for scientific analysis. Figure 1/2/3 for example reinforces my suspicion of poor quality data.
Authors should justify their equation 1. Does this equation come from somewhere? what is the advantage of knowing the percentage over cases above 0.2? There are works in the literature for example that show the complementary cumulative distribution function(CCDF) where scintillation decay on an exponential scale as s4 increases. This is just one example of how to characterize your environment.
Figure 1: it has to be better explained. There are S4 records during daytime, this is not scintillation signature from plasma bubbles.
Figure 2: besides the index does not represent much it seems that it has notable records throughout the day, which would not be ionospheric scintillation. I do not know cases of bubbles at 17; 00 LT in the literature. In addition, the levels used in equation 1 for Fig2 are not specified.
Figure 4: It is hard to extract information from those panels. They are very polluted. Innumerable works in the literature show the cases in a more synthetic way
The spatial analysis of section 3.2 are hard to justify. A decreasing number of cases was expected over the years and decreased solar activity, this is not seen in the results. The occurrence of events with almost uniform distribution is very unusual as well.
A photographic record of the installations of the receivers, mainly antenna, is missing. A more careful description of the receiver's specification and all the data processing would be important as well.
In summary, the work has no geophysical context, the data may not be reliable (scintillation during the day), the explanations are confusing, the methodology and analysis metrics do not help and finally the work does not contribute to the ionosphere area. So many improvements need to be made in this research for it to be accepted for publication
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-2021-13-RC2 -
RC3: 'Comment on angeo-2021-13', Anonymous Referee #3, 20 May 2021
This paper gives superficial account of daytime and nighttime sudden changes in S4 index computed from an invalidated hardware digital receiver the model and make of which are unknown and untraceable.
Authors even could not give proper location of receiver. I quote lines 11 from Abstract and Line 67 From Main paper where they write “Chengdu (104.07°N, 30.67°E)”. It’s a Typo but it shows a great degree of carelessness from authors that it repeats two times. So the wrong coordinates of the receiver location is typo issue or not is not verifiable.
Whole content of paper is based upon flimsy statements, arguments and results. Daytime and night time sudden impulsive rise in S4 index (that mostly seems random noise/interference as shown in figure 1 and 4) are termed as post sunset or ionospheric scintillations. More surprisingly, this has been analyzed and annual variations are also given. Authors must see first set the benchmarking of the receiver used, validate result with some high-grad receive and then record data and make a study.
I am not convinced by the set of results given in figure 1 to 4 and quality of data and analysis by any means.
Further wrong citations are given. Even many cited papers are not given in the list of references. Some of such missing citations are given wrong credit of some formula and study. So there seems a direct indication of mis-appropriation of existing literature.
Introduction 41 to 56 is filled with details of unreasonable low quality of papers (possibly available only in Chinese) which are missing from the list of references. Also, when such a vast global literature exists in this domain and living in the era of internet and global flow of information, authors have remained ignorant of major existing knowledge on ionospheric irregularities. It’s quiet shocking and painful.
Reading the paper up to page 4 gives frightening feeling of how authors have used flimsy and unverifiable noisy data set into some kind of figures.
Anyone who has some sense of a scientific rigor and ionospheric scintillations would find this work as non-scientific. I understand it is possible that some low graduate student might have written this paper. In such a case, senior and experience faculty must see that fundamentals of the report are properly placed with a literature survey and see a scientific rigor to arrive at the results.
My suggestion to the Editor is to immediately reject this paper. I do not see a core basis of argument and/or scientific data set that can be improved by some degree of presentation or reformation. In fact, the authors may be suggested take a course on ionospheric variations, ionospheric irregularities of daytime and night time along with training on how to examine, analyses and report new set of observations using existing scientific literature with great care and sensitivity/accuracy..
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-2021-13-RC3
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
-
RC1: 'Comment on angeo-2021-13', Anonymous Referee #1, 15 Mar 2021
This paper focuses the spatiotemporal characteristics of ionospheric scintillation in Southwest China by examined the GPS data recording from January 2018 to September 2020 in Chengdu. The results illustrate that the ionospheric scintillation events show a seasonal and diurnal distribution pattern, and more frequently occur at an azimuth angle of 120°-200°, the strong scintillation events take place at an azimuth angle of 160° and 40°. Basically, the information presented is useful to the community and should be published after major revisions and clarification. The list of some revisions and clarifications is suggested as below, especially lots of clarifications should be necessary.
- Usually, those abbreviation, for example GPS/BDS/GAL (including but not limited to), need clarification in scientific publication.
- Some statements should be clarified. What is the difference between the frequency ionospheric scintillation events, the incidence of ionospheric scintillation, the occurrence of ionospheric scintillation, the occurrence rate of ionospheric scintillation events, the scintillation rates and the probability of occurrence of ionospheric scintillation events, which may confuse readers.
- In line 90, the two functions are in duplicate? In the S4 formula, what is <SI'2>? They share the same dimension? It should is <SI'2>?
- Those abscissas in Figs. 1 and 2 should be consistent with each other (including but not limited to).
- Fig. 2 is computed by function 2? It may confuse reader.
- Similar to comment 2, what is the scintillation rates in line 149?
- In line152-157, the wind field can be measured in Chengdu? If so, the measurement of wind field may significantly support the discussion and improve this paper.
- What is the abscissa of Fig.7? The title of Fig.7 is 2018-5, whereas the abscissa of Fig.7 is month of year? The writing may confuse reader.
- In Fig 8, what parameter does the scale colorbar note? It should be noted.
- In Abstract section, author writes " a data processing program was developed". Thus, the developed program should be stated in detail, and what is new?
- English should be improved, for instance, "Ionospheric amplitude scintillation is the amplitude change caused by the electromagnetic wave signal passing through the ionosphere." (including but not limited to). Indeed, amplitude scintillation should not be caused by the electromagnetic wave, but by the iohospheric irregularity.
- In line 113, what is "abnormal occurrences of ionospheric scintillation"? which needs clarifications (including but not limited to).
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-2021-13-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Hailong Li, 18 Mar 2021
Thank you very much for your review. According to your question, I have modified and clarified some of the issues. One of the documents has traces of revision and the other is reply. The specific response is as follows.
- Usually, those abbreviation, for example GPS/BDS/GAL (including but not limited to), need clarification in scientific publication.
Reply: These abbreviations stand for Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS). I modified the relevant part of the article.
- Some statements should be clarified. What is the difference between the frequency ionospheric scintillation events, the incidence of ionospheric scintillation, the occurrence of ionospheric scintillation, the occurrence rate of ionospheric scintillation events, the scintillation rates and the probability of occurrence of ionospheric scintillation events, which may confuse readers.
Reply: There are indeed some problems in the translation. I have modified all the sentences that may cause confusion.
- In line 90, the two functions are in duplicate? In the S4 formula, what is <SI'2>? They share the same dimension? It should is <SI'2>?
Reply: The function has been duplicated and has been modified and deleted. In the S4 formula, your guess is correct, and I have also modified it.
- Those abscissas in Figs. 1 and 2 should be consistent with each other (including but not limited to).
Reply: The abscissas in the figure refer to the local time, including the following format, which have been revised and unified.
- 2 is computed by function 2? It may confuse reader.
Reply: Fig.2 is completely calculated by function 2. According to your suggestion, I explained in the article.
- Similar to comment 2, what is the scintillation rates in line 149?
Reply: The description of the scintillation rates here is inaccurate and has been modified in the text.
- In line152-157, the wind field can be measured in Chengdu? If so, the measurement of wind field may significantly support the discussion and improve this paper.
Reply: Unfortunately, because there is no relevant measurement equipment, there is no historical measurement data of the wind field in Chengdu. This part of the research is based on the research results of other scholars. Related references are as follows:
[1] Liu, Libo et al., 2003. Seasonal behavior of equivalent winds over Wuhan derived from ionospheric data in 2000–2001. Advances in space research, 32(9), pp.1765–1770.
[2] Luan, X et al., 2004. A climatology of the F-layer equivalent winds derived from ionosonde measurements over two decades along the 120°-150°E sector, Ann. Geophys., 22, 2785–2796, https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-22-2785-2004.
- What is the abscissa of Fig.7? The title of Fig.7 is 2018-5, whereas the abscissa of Fig.7 is month of year? The writing may confuse reader.
Reply: The abscissa refers to the day of the month, the error here has been modified.
- In Fig 8, what parameter does the scale colorbar note? It should be noted.
Reply: The color scale represents the level of S4 value, which is marked in the figure.
- In Abstract section, author writes " a data processing program was developed". Thus, the developed program should be stated in detail, and what is new?
Reply: Developed a batch processing program for processing ionospheric scintillation data. It is a GUI software that can realize data error removal, automatic correction, automatic drawing, batch processing and other functions. This part is supplemented in the text.
- English should be improved, for instance, "Ionospheric amplitude scintillation is the amplitude change caused by the electromagnetic wave signal passing through the ionosphere." (including but not limited to). Indeed, amplitude scintillation should not be caused by the electromagnetic wave, but by the iohospheric irregularity.
Reply: According to your suggestion, this part of the narrative in the text has been re-expressed.
- In line 113, what is "abnormal occurrences of ionospheric scintillation"? which needs clarifications (including but not limited to).
Reply: The statement is wrong, it should be an ionospheric anomaly or an ionospheric scintillation event, which has been modified.
Thank you again for pointing out the mistakes in the article, so that I can express the research content more accurately.
-
RC2: 'Comment on angeo-2021-13', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 May 2021
The work presents little contribution to the area and the results present very superficial discussions and without any geophysical contextualization that would be necessary. This article needs a huge major revision. My main concern is the fact that there are S4 records outside of nighttime. For me it shows that the database of this work has to be reviewed more carefully and perhaps it is damaged and cannot be used for scientific analysis. Figure 1/2/3 for example reinforces my suspicion of poor quality data.
Authors should justify their equation 1. Does this equation come from somewhere? what is the advantage of knowing the percentage over cases above 0.2? There are works in the literature for example that show the complementary cumulative distribution function(CCDF) where scintillation decay on an exponential scale as s4 increases. This is just one example of how to characterize your environment.
Figure 1: it has to be better explained. There are S4 records during daytime, this is not scintillation signature from plasma bubbles.
Figure 2: besides the index does not represent much it seems that it has notable records throughout the day, which would not be ionospheric scintillation. I do not know cases of bubbles at 17; 00 LT in the literature. In addition, the levels used in equation 1 for Fig2 are not specified.
Figure 4: It is hard to extract information from those panels. They are very polluted. Innumerable works in the literature show the cases in a more synthetic way
The spatial analysis of section 3.2 are hard to justify. A decreasing number of cases was expected over the years and decreased solar activity, this is not seen in the results. The occurrence of events with almost uniform distribution is very unusual as well.
A photographic record of the installations of the receivers, mainly antenna, is missing. A more careful description of the receiver's specification and all the data processing would be important as well.
In summary, the work has no geophysical context, the data may not be reliable (scintillation during the day), the explanations are confusing, the methodology and analysis metrics do not help and finally the work does not contribute to the ionosphere area. So many improvements need to be made in this research for it to be accepted for publication
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-2021-13-RC2 -
RC3: 'Comment on angeo-2021-13', Anonymous Referee #3, 20 May 2021
This paper gives superficial account of daytime and nighttime sudden changes in S4 index computed from an invalidated hardware digital receiver the model and make of which are unknown and untraceable.
Authors even could not give proper location of receiver. I quote lines 11 from Abstract and Line 67 From Main paper where they write “Chengdu (104.07°N, 30.67°E)”. It’s a Typo but it shows a great degree of carelessness from authors that it repeats two times. So the wrong coordinates of the receiver location is typo issue or not is not verifiable.
Whole content of paper is based upon flimsy statements, arguments and results. Daytime and night time sudden impulsive rise in S4 index (that mostly seems random noise/interference as shown in figure 1 and 4) are termed as post sunset or ionospheric scintillations. More surprisingly, this has been analyzed and annual variations are also given. Authors must see first set the benchmarking of the receiver used, validate result with some high-grad receive and then record data and make a study.
I am not convinced by the set of results given in figure 1 to 4 and quality of data and analysis by any means.
Further wrong citations are given. Even many cited papers are not given in the list of references. Some of such missing citations are given wrong credit of some formula and study. So there seems a direct indication of mis-appropriation of existing literature.
Introduction 41 to 56 is filled with details of unreasonable low quality of papers (possibly available only in Chinese) which are missing from the list of references. Also, when such a vast global literature exists in this domain and living in the era of internet and global flow of information, authors have remained ignorant of major existing knowledge on ionospheric irregularities. It’s quiet shocking and painful.
Reading the paper up to page 4 gives frightening feeling of how authors have used flimsy and unverifiable noisy data set into some kind of figures.
Anyone who has some sense of a scientific rigor and ionospheric scintillations would find this work as non-scientific. I understand it is possible that some low graduate student might have written this paper. In such a case, senior and experience faculty must see that fundamentals of the report are properly placed with a literature survey and see a scientific rigor to arrive at the results.
My suggestion to the Editor is to immediately reject this paper. I do not see a core basis of argument and/or scientific data set that can be improved by some degree of presentation or reformation. In fact, the authors may be suggested take a course on ionospheric variations, ionospheric irregularities of daytime and night time along with training on how to examine, analyses and report new set of observations using existing scientific literature with great care and sensitivity/accuracy..
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-2021-13-RC3
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