Separation of the ionospheric and thermospheric contributions in the data from the Triple Ionosophere PhotoMeter onboard the Feng-Yun 3E satellite
摘要
The Triple Ionosphere PhotoMeter (TRIPM) is a far ultraviolet nadir-view photometer that is onboard the second-generation, polar-orbiting Chinese meteorological satellite Feng-Yun 3E (FY-3E), which was launched on July 5, 2021. TRIPM has three channels, and each is used to measure different types of emissions: (1) 135.6 nm airglow produced by the recombination of the O+ ions and electrons in the absence of sunlight (nighttime channel); (2) 135.6 nm airglow from the OI when sunlight is present (daytime/dusk-dawn 135.6 nm channel); and (3) Airglow in the N2LBH of the TRIPM (daytime/dusk-dawn N2LBH channel). FY-3E is a satellite operating in the early morning orbit. Therefore, the data are mostly distributed on the dawn-dusk side or at times when the solar zenith angle is relatively large. In this study, combined with simulation calculations, the data are analysed. To further explore the application value of the data products, a model is used to separate the ionospheric radiative recombination contribution from the thermosphere photoelectron impact excitation contribution in the data from the daytime/dusk-dawn 135.6 nm channel. This approach not only improves the accuracy of O/N2 derived from the 135.6 nm channel and N2LBH channel but also provides the ionospheric 135.6 nm radiance at the same time as the product. The results show that the 135.6 nm radiance originating from the combination of O+ and electrons extracted from the measurement data exhibits similar equatorial anomaly peak structure characteristics and seasonal variations as the corresponding GPS total electron content (TEC) data. On the other hand, the separated 135.6 nm radiance generated from the thermosphere photoelectron collision excitation does not contain radiative recombination contributions; thus, the ionosphere influence is greatly avoided when the O/N2 is obtained.