Analysis of Ionospheric Data Sets to Identify Periodic Signatures Matching Atmospheric Planetary Waves

Atmospheric planetary waves play a role in introducing variability to the low-latitude ionosphere. To better understand this coupling, this study investigates times when oscillations seen in both atmospheric planetary waves and ionospheric data-sets have similar periodicity. The planetary wave data-set used are temperature observations made by Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER). These highlight periods during which 2-Day westward propagating wave-number 3 waves are evident in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. The ionospheric data-set is Total Electron Content (TEC), which is used to identify periods during which the ionosphere appears to respond to the planetary waves. Data from KP and F10.7 indices are used to determine events that may be of external origin. A 17-year time-span from 2002 to 2018 is used for this analysis so that both times of solar minimum and maximum can be studied. To extract the periods of this collection of data a Morlet Wavelet analysis is used, along with thresholding to indicate events when similar periods are seen in each data-set. Trends are then determined, which can lead to verification of previous assumptions and new discoveries.