Detection of pulsating aurora from GNSS total electron content

Abstract This study investigates, for the first time, the effect of pulsating aurora on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) total electron content (TEC). TEC measurements from multiple ground-based GNSS receivers are compared with auroral intensities recorded by two all-sky cameras during a pulsating aurora event on 15 March 2018 in northern Scandinavia. At hour-long timescales, the GNSS-derived TEC exhibits clear correspondence with the overall auroral activity. At shorter timescales of a few minutes, the auroral emission brightness measured by the all-sky cameras highly correlates with the time derivative of the TEC, which is consistent with the local production/recombination balance in the ionosphere. In addition, the TEC is observed to decrease more slowly than the optical brightness within each pulsation, indicating that electron recombination does not occur instantaneously after the emission. These findings demonstrate that GNSS-derived TEC measurements can be used to detect and study key signatures of pulsating aurora, opening the possibility of using the extensive network of GNSS satellites and ground-based receivers to perform unprecedented large-scale studies of this type of aurora. Graphical Abstract