First estimates of the second-order ionospheric effect on radio occultation observations

This study examines the impact of the second-order ionospheric effect on radio occultation (RO) data products. We propose a new linear combination between dual frequency GPS observables, which retrieves slant total electron content free from the second-order ionospheric effect. Our STEC values differ from those obtained by independent techniques by a maximum of 3 total electron content units (TECU), depending on the geographic location and geomagnetic activity. Additionally, we suggest an alternative method of computing the second-order ionospheric delay in RO experiments, which does not require the use of geomagnetic and ionospheric models. First estimates show that the second-order ionospheric delay for the RO experiments falls within the range [-10, -8] mm, which is of the same order of magnitude with second-order ionospheric delay estimates from ground-based experiments. Finally, as a by-product of our model, we retrieve weighted mean geomagnetic field values, which we compare with theoretical estimates computed by the International Geomagnetic Reference Field-10 (IGRF-10) model. Our estimations agree with the IGRF-10 model between 0.23% and 7.0%.