ABSTRACT
The concept of space weather is now widely used in quantitative descriptions of the physical changes in the near-Earth space environment in response to variations in solar radiation, solar plasma ejection, and the electromagnetic status of the interplanetary medium. In the last decade, the utility of radio wave transmissions from global positioning system (GPS) satellites in obtaining information about the Earth's ionosphere simultaneously from a global network of stations has been demonstrated. Irregularities in the ionosphere due to space weather events caused by solar flares and coronal mass ejection can scatter trans-ionospheric radio signals, producing fluctuations in both amplitude and phase and GPS cycle slips, disrupting satellite communications and navigation. We concern our study at the equatorial and sub-auroral region during low solar activity. For this purpose, a dual-frequency GSV 4004A GPS receiver is installed at sub-auroral region Maitri, Antarctica (geomagnetic lat. 62.8° S, geomagnetic long. 52.8° E) and equatorial region Bhopal (geographic lat. 23.2° N, geographic long. 77.6° E), Space Science Laboratory, Department of Physics, Barkatullah University. This chapter discusses some space weather effects on GPS signal propagation, total electron content (TEC) variation and ionospheric scintillation based on GPS data at high-latitude region Maitri and low-latitude region Bhopal.
