The Effect of Sunspots Number on the Total ElectronContent (TEC) of the Ionospheric Layer E Over KirkukStation for Solar Cycle 24

In this work, the effect of sunspots number (ri) on the total electronic content (tec)were studied for the years (2008, 2014, 2018) which represents the rising phase, the peak andthe down phase of the solar cycle 24 over kirkuk station in iraq at latitude 35° north andlongitude 44° east, by finding the tec values for the e – layer, the layer’s impression timesare determined for the days of solstice and equinox. in this study the international referenceionosphere program (iri) program have been applied to find the values of tec whichprovided by the space research committee (cospar) and international union of radiosciences (ursi), iri have three upper side electron density options. the accuracy of thisstudy was verified by the application conducted of the university of hacettepe in ankara,turkey by matching the reading of tec from global position system (gps) with output dataof tec from the iri for ankara station which located at (39.7 n;32.76 e). and from thisinvestigation turns out that the output data from the option iri2001 was more consistent withreading of the gps, than the rest of the other options. from this study by using the statisticalprogram minitab version 2018. there is a strong correlation between the total electroncontent (tec) of ionospheric layer e and sunspot number for solar cycle 24