Determination of the Velocity of Ionospheric Disturbances from the Dynamics of Additional U-Shaped Traces on Ionograms

One of the approaches to solving the inverse problem of determining the parameters of ionospheric disturbances is the multiple solution of the two-point problem with the subsequent comparison of the simulation results with experimental data (ionograms). However, this approach is usually associated with significant calculation time costs, which makes it impossible to process large arrays of sounding data. The method described in this article makes it possible to quickly determine the horizontal velocity of the ionospheric disturbance by descent rate of an additional U-shaped trace moving to lower virtual heights on the vertical sounding ionograms: in order to calculate the velocity, it is proposed to use the results of the ray tracing obtained for the reference background profiles with disturbances superimposed on them.