Central and Northern China TEC Map Using the Kriging Method

In this paper the Kriging method was introduced to map Central and Northern China （30°N-55°N, 70°E-140°E） Total Electron Content （TEC） Map （CNC TEC Map）. Firstly, three popular ionosphere models （Klobuchar model, IRI and JPL GIM） were compared with grid TEC. Then CNC TEC Map using Kriging method with constant drift, linear drift and quadratic drift were compared with each other. Then TEC map derived from nearest neighbor method, polynomial regression method （order=5） and Kriging method with different temporal resolution of 5 minutes, 30 minutes and 120 minutes were compared. The result revealed that even in the mid-latitude area, these popular ionosphere models showed great differences from observation; that the results of the Kriging algorithms were similar which led us go use ordinary Kriging method, i.e. Kriging method with constant drift; and that the Kriging method was begger than other methods, especially when temporal resolution was high.