The effect of the 1999 total solar eclipse on the ionosphere

Abstract

The localised “night” created as the moon's shadow travelled across the Earth during the total solar eclipse of 11th August 1999, produced changes in the ionosphere across Europe that were monitored with a variety of modern instrumentation. The passage of the 100km wide, super-sonic lunar shadow offered the opportunity to examine the changes in electron densities, radio absorption, neutral wind patterns and the possible generation of waves in the layers of the ionosphere. All these for an event for which the cause of the disturbance can be calculated with accuracy. Reported here are the results from the vertical ionosondes located under the path of totality and in the partial eclipse region and dual frequency GPS TEC measurements. The ionosondes showed that even in the partial shadow the peak electron densities of the F & E ionospheric layers decreased by as much as 20–35%. The TEC measurements showed that the vertical equivalent line integrated electron density dropped by 15% at the 97% partial eclipse north of the path of totality. The consequences of these observations are discussed in relation to making model predictions.