Observations of TEC Depletion, Periodic Structure of TEC, ROTI and Scintillation Associated with ESF Irregularities over South China

The observations of Global Positioning System (GPS) scintillation,Total Electron Content (TEC) depletion,the periodic structure of TEC and Rate of TEC Index (ROTI) over south China were presented.Data were collected from GPS observations at stations of Shenzhen and Guangzhou from 2011 to 2012.This study reported that the ratio of simultaneous occurrences of TEC depletions with strong scintillations was higher than that of TEC depletions with weak scintillations in vernal and autumnal equinoxes of 2011 over South China.The number of the periodic structures of TEC with depletion contained was greater than that with no depletion contained corresponding to strong scintillations.The structure of the slab of plasma irregularities could be responsible for the simultaneous occurrences of TEC depletion with strong scintillations and ROTI.Before and during the occurrences of strong scintillation,there was Large-Scale Wave Structure (LSWS) which provided the seed ionization perturbation to trigger ESF irregularities and contributed to the periodic structure of TEC.