Comparative study of TEC with IRI model for solar minimum period at low latitude Original Research Article

Measurements of electron density profiles carried out at the low latitude station Arecibo, with the incoherent scatter radar, are used to derive total electron content (TEC). Comparisons are made with the IRI-95 model. Some discrepancies are found between the observed and the IRI predicted TEC and these discrepancies are maximum in equinox and summer months and minimum in winter months. However, for winter, a fair agreement is found between the IRI and the Arecibo data. We attribute these discrepancies to the profile shapes in the IRI model.