The Impact of Sunspots Number on Critical Frequencies foF2 for the IONOSPHERIC Layer-F2 Over Erbil Station During the Down Phase of Solar Cycle 24

The ionosphere layer (F2) is known as the most important layer for High frequency (Hf) radio communication because it is a permanent layer and excited during the day and night so it is able to reflect the frequencies at night and day due to its high critical frequency, and this layer is affected by daily and monthly solar activity. In this study the characteristics and behavior of F2 layer during Solar cycle 24 were studied, the effect of Sunspots number (Ri) on the critical frequency (foF2), were investigated for the years (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020) which represents the down phase of the solar cycle 24 over Erbil station (36° N, 44° E) by finding the critical frequency (foF2) values, the layer’ s impression times are determined for the days of solstice as well as equinox, where the solar activity was examined for the days of the winter and summer solstice and the days of the spring and autumn equinoxes for a period of 24 hours by applied the International Reference Ionosphere model IRI (2016). The output data for foF2 were verified by using the IRI-Ne- Quick option by specifying the time, date and Sunspot number parameters. Statistical analysis was caried out through the application of the Minitab (version 2018) in order to find the correlation between the critical frequency (foF2) of Ionospheric layer F2 and Sunspot number. It was concluded that the correlation is strong and positive, this indicate that critical frequency (foF2) increase with increasing Sunspots number (Ri) for solar cycle 24.