Validation of electron density and temperature observed by DEMETER Original Research Article

Measuring electron density (Ne) and temperature (Te) using a DC Langmuir probe in the ionosphere is very often degraded by the electrode contamination. In order to examine the accuracy of DEMETER observations, we compared DEMETER Ne and Te with several other satellites observations and IRI2012 as reference data. DEMETER Ne and Te show well-known dependencies on the solar irradiance except for the range of F10.7 > 100. However, DEMETER Ne are about 70% lower than those of IRI in day time data and its solar irradiance dependency is consistent with the reference data in night time data. It was confirmed that the negative slope appears in deep solar minimum solar cycle 23/24. DEMETER Te are higher than IRI data by 500–1500 K in day time and by 800 K in night time. The relation between Ne and Te is well defined by a negative slope both in DEMETER and IRI during day time, while such a similarity is not recognized in night time data. DEMETER Te is 700 K higher than IRI Te for the same value of Ne. When Ne is less than 104 cm−3 in night time, significant reductions in DEMETER Te are observed, which is close to expected values. Such discrepancies from the reference data and some peculiar behaviors of DEMETER Te and Ne data necessitate a careful attention in using them in consideration of their data alterations. However, their relative variations and averaged behavior in time contain useful information for scientific studies such as dependencies on solar irradiance and wave-4 longitudinal structure under certain conditions (Ne > 104 cm−3 and F10.7 < 100).