Life-time of ionospheric scintillations from multi-satellite radio transmission recordings

Amplitude recordings from five U.S. Navy Navigational Satellites (NNSS), at a frequency of 150 MHz, were used to estimate the life-time of scintillation producing ionization patches in the F-region. The median life-time of scintillations, which was found to be 5 hr, differs to a considerable degree from the life-time of ionospheric reflections reported elsewhere. It is suggested that various spatial resolutions of ionospheric sounding techniques may account for the difference in the computed life-times.