Underutilized spaceborne GPS observations for space weather monitoring

For the first time, GPS observations on board the meteorological mission MetOp were used to reveal an occurrence of plasma irregularities at altitudes above 835 km. Our results demonstrate that during strong geomagnetic storms the intense plasma density irregularities can occur in the topside ionosphere near similar to 500 km altitude and can be still persisted above 835 km. Joint analysis of the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network global convection patterns, ground-based GPS total electron content (TEC) observations, and MetOp-derived topside TEC observations confirmed that plasma irregularities above similar to 835 km coincided with the plasmaspheric/magnetospheric part of the storm-enhanced density and the polar tongue of ionization structures, which is the first direct observation of the storm-enhanced density/tongue of ionization structure in the plasmaspheric TEC.