Modeling ionospheric disturbance features in quasi‐vertically incident ionograms using 3‐D magnetoionic ray tracing and atmospheric gravity waves

The Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) has initiated an experimental program, Spatial Ionospheric Correlation Experiment, utilizing state‐of‐the‐art DSTO‐designed high frequency digital receivers. This program seeks to understand ionospheric disturbances at scales < 150 km and temporal resolutions under 1 min through the simultaneous observation and recording of multiple quasi‐vertical ionograms (QVI) with closely spaced ionospheric control points. A detailed description of and results from the first campaign conducted in February 2008 were presented by Harris et al. (2012). In this paper we employ a 3‐D magnetoionic Hamiltonian ray tracing engine, developed by DSTO, to (1) model the various disturbance features observed on both the O and X polarization modes in our QVI data and (2) understand how they are produced. The ionospheric disturbances which produce the observed features were modeled by perturbing the ionosphere with atmospheric gravity waves.