Statistical Analysis of Ionospheric Global Electron Content Response to Geomagnetic Storms

The paper is devoted to a statistical analysis of the ionosphere global electron content response to geomagnetic storm. Here we continue previous statistical analysis of the geomagnetic storms aftereffects, which was based on the peak electron density data from the Irkutsk and Kaliningrad ionosondes. The global electron content has two main advantages to be used as the ionospheric characteristic. First, in contrast to the peak electron density, the global electron content is much less affected by the processes associated with all types of atmospheric activity. Second, the analysis of global electron content allows us to test a number of hypotheses suggested in our previous study.