Quality warning: Autoscaled Ionospheric Data from Port Stanley

This is a warning about the quality of autoscaled ionospheric parameters and true-heights from the Port Stanley Ionospheric Monitoring station. It applies to data throughout 2004 and is ongoing.

Autoscaled data are produced by software which tries to fit a curve to the ionogram trace and from that curve, to quantify certain ionospheric parameters and to calculate a true-height profile if required. It has been noticed that during 2004 (since mid January) the autoscaling at Port Stanley has frequently made serious errors in fitting the trace and so has made errors in calculating the derived values.

Serious autoscaling errors do not occur to every sounding, but occur frequently (several times a day). As a result we recommend that autoscaled Port Stanley data for this period are used with great caution and are checked against the ionogram of the same sounding for accuracy.

There is no problem with manually checked data at Port Stanley. This has been checked and rescaled by a specialist scaler. All soundings at Port Stanley are automatically scaled and hourly (on the hour) soundings are also manually checked.

Manually scaled or checked data from any station should always be preferred over autoscaled data for accuracy.

Please contact Sarah James S.F.James@rl.ac.uk for further information or help on this matter.