Studying travelling ionospheric disturbances from near-vertical ionosphere sounding with high temporal resolution

In this study, we analyze the near-vertical ionospheric sounding data obtained with a multipurpose digital chirp ionosonde. The ionosonde was recording ionograms once each minute. We analyzed the results of processing the datasets over three observational years from 2010 to 2012. Obtaining ionograms with a high temporal resolution allowed us to trace the dynamics and evolution of additional traces referred to as “cusps”, and also to combine ionograms with such traces into sequences. The percentage of ionograms containing cusps proved to be more than 10% of the overall number of ionograms. Thus, during daytime, the rate surpasses 30%, whereas, during nighttime, such ionograms are practically absent. The typical cusp lifetime proved to be 4-15 min, therefore, disturbed ionograms are much more rarely detected with standard vertical sounding ionosondes. The presence of such traces unambiguously evidences significant electron density horizontal gradients caused by travelling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) with scales up to 50 km.