Medium‐scale traveling ionospheric disturbances detected with dense and wide TEC maps over North America

Nighttime and daytime medium‐scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (MSTIDs) are detected with dense and wide detrended total electron content (TEC) maps over North America using multiple GPS receiver networks. The TEC maps cover a wide region of 60–130°W and 24–54°N (30–65°N in geomagnetic latitude), and have a spatial resolution of 1.05° × 1.05° in latitude and longitude (0.15° × 0.15° with 7 × 7 pixel smoothing) and a temporal resolution of 30 seconds. The TEC maps reveal, for the first time, that the nighttime MSTIDs propagate southwestward with 200–500 km wavelengths over North America and have wavefronts longer than ∼2,000 km. We also observe that daytime MSTIDs with 300–1,000 km wavelengths propagate southeastward until mid‐afternoon and southwestward in the late afternoon. In the mid‐to‐late afternoon, these MSTIDs propagating in the different directions are superimposed. The TEC maps can be a new powerful tool to investigate the MSTIDs.