Example 3: Daily Ionospheric Parameters For a Single Location

In case you are interested in a single location (as opposed to the grid) PyIRI can evaluate parameters at this location if it is passed as a 1-element NumPy array.

Import libraries:

import numpy as np
import PyIRI
import PyIRI.main_library as ml
import PyIRI.plotting as plot

Specify a year, a month, and a day:

year = 2020
month = 4
day = 1

Specify solar flux index F10.7 in SFU:

f107 = 100

Specify what coefficients to use for the peak of F2 layer:

0 = CCIR, 1 = URSI

ccir_or_ursi = 0

Create a horizontal grid with a single location of interest. E.g. lon = 10 E, lat = 20 N.

alon = np.array([10.])
alat = np.array([20.])

Create any temporal array expressed in decimal hours (regular or irregular). For this example we use regularly spaced time array:

hr_res = 1
ahr = np.arange(0, 24, hr_res)

Create height array. It can be regular or irregular. Here is an example for regularly spaced array:

alt_res = 10
alt_min = 90
alt_max = 700
aalt = np.arange(alt_min, alt_max, alt_res)

Find ionospheric parameters for F2, F1, E, and Es regions by calling IRI_density_1day function:

f2, f1, e_peak, es_peak, sun, mag, edp = ml.IRI_density_1day(year, month, day, ahr, alon, alat, aalt, f107, PyIRI.coeff_dir, ccir_or_ursi)

f2 dictionary contains:

peak density ‘Nm’ in m-3
critical frequency ‘fo’ in MHz
the obliquity factor for a distance of 3,000 km ‘M3000’
height of the peak ‘hm’ in km
thickness of the topside ‘B_top’ in km
thickness of the bottomside ‘B_bot’ in km.

f1 dictionary contains:

peak density ‘Nm’ in m-3
critical frequency ‘fo’ in MHz
probability occurrence of F1 region ‘P’
height of the peak ‘hm’ in km
thickness of the bottomside ‘B_bot’ in km.

e_peak dictionary contains:

peak density ‘Nm’ in m-3
critical frequency ‘fo’ in MHz
height of the peak ‘hm’ in km
thickness of the bottomside ‘B_bot’ in km.
thickness of the topside ‘B_top’ in km.

e_peak dictionary contains:

peak density ‘Nm’ in m-3
critical frequency ‘fo’ in MHz
height of the peak ‘hm’ in km
thickness of the bottomside ‘B_bot’ in km.
thickness of the topside ‘B_top’ in km.

sun dictionary contains:

longitude of subsolar point ‘lon’
latitude of subsolar point ‘lat’

mag dictionary contains:

magnetic field inclination in degrees ‘inc’
modified dip angle in degrees ‘modip’
magnetic dip latitude in degrees ‘mag_dip_lat’

edp array:

3-D electron density with shape [N_T, N_V, N_G]

Plot diurnal variation of the parameters for a single location:

plot_dir = '/Users/Documents/MY_FOLDER/'

# Make sure alon and alat contains lon_plot and lat_plot
lon_plot = 10
lat_plot = 20

plot.PyIRI_plot_1location_diurnal_par(f2, f1, e_peak, es_peak, alon, alat,
lon_plot, lat_plot, ahr, plot_dir, plot_name='PyIRI_diurnal.pdf')

Diurnal variation of the ionospheric parameters.

Plot diurnal variation of electron density:

plot.PyIRI_plot_1location_diurnal_density(edp, alon, alat, lon_plot, lat_plot,
aalt, ahr, plot_dir, plot_name='PyIRI_EDP_diurnal.pdf')