The ionospheric storms in the American sector and their longitudinal dependence at the northern middle latitudes

On the basis of the total electron content (TEC) observations from Madrigal database, we have made a statistical analysis of the ionospheric response during 217 geomagnetic storms from the year 2001 to 2015, including observations at 6 different latitude zones along one meridian in the American sector and 4 different longitudes at the middle latitude zone. Our results show that the ionospheric storm has prominent latitudinal dependence, with negative storm prevailing at high latitudes and positive storm at lower latitudes. The maximum ratio of positive to negative storms is observed at around 30°N magnetic latitude. The ionospheric response depends also on the phases of the storm. The occurrence of positive storm decreases during recovery phase when compared to that during main phase, while the negative storm presents opposite pattern. However, the occurrence of positive storm increases at equatorial and low latitudes during recovery phase. Additionally, during main phase, the occurrence of negative storm is higher at equatorial and low latitudes than that at middle latitudes. The local time dependences of the ionospheric storm onsets are quite different for different latitudes. The negative storm mainly occurs from post-middle night to morning hours and the positive storm mainly occurs during daytime at middle latitudes; while both the positive and negative storms mainly occur during nighttime at equatorial latitude. For all latitudes, the typical time delay between the main phase onset and the onset time of ionospheric negative storm is longer than 10 h, while it is shorter than 10 h for positive storm (expect at low and equatorial latitudes). We further check the longitudinal dependence of the ionospheric storm at middle latitude, and find that the occurrence of positive storm is higher in American and Asian sectors than that in European sector, and the non-significant storm is mostly observed in European sector. The 'forbidden time interval' of negative storm in Asian sector is different with that in American and European sectors.