Advanced Classification of Ionospheric Troughs in the Morning and Evening Conditions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper provide an advanced classification of high-latitude ionosphere density structures. He study is based on the 10-year champ electron density profile data in the early evening and morning in the southern hemisphere. The main ionosphere trough is separated from high-latitude trough though an auroral diffuse particle precipitation model. The work can be potentially crucial for the Aeronomy. However, there are some minor problems need to be solved before it is suitable for publication

 

Major comments1: why choose southern hemisphere only?? What about northern hemisphere

Major comments 2: is the employed auroral diffuse particle precipitation model being validated?

Line 63 replace ‘angles’ with ‘aspects

 

Line 125-126 decrease 30%, so compared with what background density?

 

For the champ measurements, what is the error bar??

 

Line 122 early evening and early morning’

 

Line 141-143 I do not understand here, what does the author mean by reduce to Kp=2 to eliminate the dependence of geomagnetic activity?? Since the author is focusing on high-latitude ionosphere, which means even minor geomagnetic activity shall play crucial roles.

 

Line 165 revise the sentence into Between 0 and 120 E,

Line 200-201 again, this is confused. How can this under Kp=3+ similar to Kp=4+

 

Line 374-375 same problem as Line 141-143

 

Line 379-381 revise the sentence into

The sharp difference between the morning and evening ionosphere is that the MIT and HLT are separated by a large gap in the morning.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

See my comments in the PDF attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.doc