How to Use ionosphere in a Sentence

ionosphere

noun
  • At night, with no sun, the ionosphere is much less charged.
    — Chau Tu, Slate Magazine, 2017-08-07
  • At low frequencies, the ionosphere kicks in and gets in the way.
    — Sarah Scoles, Quanta Magazine, 2023-09-20
  • That results in a much thinner, less dense ionosphere, at least until the next dawn.
    — Drew Goins, The Atlantic, 10 Mar. 2026
  • Red auroras hit at the ionosphere, around 150 miles high.
    — Stephanie Vermillion, Outside Online, 2024-11-21
  • The ionosphere sits directly above the Earth’s ozone layer.
    — Alex Stuckey, San Antonio Express-News, 2018-01-05
  • Scientists know the ionosphere evolves in a 24-hour process, from day to night, says Frissell.
    — Catherine Duncan, Smithsonian Magazine, 2024-03-18
  • Because the pulse takes time to reach the ionosphere, there's a delay between the lightning and the appearance of the elve.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 2019-12-10
  • The signal must have been created as the Parker probe cruised through the ionosphere of Venus.
    — Mike Wehner, BGR, 2021-05-05
  • Earth’s fluctuating ionosphere can impair a link between a satellite and a ground station.
    — Sven Bilén, IEEE Spectrum, 23 July 2020
  • Many radio signals travel long distances by bouncing off a region of the upper atmosphere called the ionosphere.
    — Ryan French, Space.com, 13 Apr. 2026
  • This interference can affect the ionosphere, which plays a key role in satellite and GPS signals.
    — Tiffany Acosta, AZCentral.com, 7 Aug. 2025
  • Their mission goal is to monitor magnetic signals from Earth’s core and mantle, as well as the ionosphere and magnetosphere.
    — Chris Young, Interesting Engineering, 14 Nov. 2025
  • Under normal conditions, high-frequency radio waves can travel long distances by bouncing off the upper layers in the ionosphere.
    — Daisy Dobrijevic, Space.com, 24 Apr. 2026
  • That means scientists need to listen to frequencies well below 50 megahertz—parts of the radio spectrum that are largely blocked by Earth’s ionosphere.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 20 Jan. 2026
  • These stations will monitor satellite signal errors, especially errors caused by the ionosphere and the troposphere, which can bend a satellite’s signal.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 15 Aug. 2017
  • Researchers from Nagoya University looked at how the plasmasphere and ionosphere react during such extreme space weather events.
    — Samantha Mathewson, Space.com, 25 Nov. 2025
  • Perhaps most important, Echo proved that the ionosphere didn’t cause undue electrical interference for signals reflected from space.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 12 Nov. 2020
  • The radiation from the flares reached Earth quickly and disturbed the ionosphere, the upper atmospheric layer that carries many radio and navigation signals.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 24 Apr. 2026
  • By measuring the change in frequency when the signals were bent in Jupiter's upper atmosphere, the ionosphere, scientists can calculate characteristics of the planet.
    — Eric Lagatta, USA Today, 5 Feb. 2026
  • Another gap exists for radio waves with wavelengths of 10 meters or more, which are reflected by Earth’s ionosphere; to observe these, astronomers have proposed building radio telescopes on the moon’s far side.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 15 May 2026
  • Space hurricanes occur in the Earth’s ionosphere and magnetosphere near the magnetic poles, where streams of energetic particles interact with the atmosphere.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 21 June 2026
  • This was an active, swirling system in Earth's ionosphere, complete with fast-moving plasma flows, density shears, and upward electric currents, just like a hurricane's convection engine, but electromagnetic.
    — Daisy Dobrijevic, Space.com, 4 Aug. 2025
  • Subsequent studies showed that these storms can inject large numbers of high-energy electrons into the polar ionosphere, potentially disrupting communication and navigation technologies.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 21 June 2026
  • Using Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph, the team mapped out the temperature and density of ions in Uranus’s ionosphere, a region where the atmosphere becomes ionised and interacts strongly with the planet’s magnetic field.
    — Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering, 21 Feb. 2026
  • The Australian system, developed over 40 years, works by refracting high-frequency electromagnetic waves off the ionosphere to detect distant objects that are invisible to conventional radars because of Earth's curvature.
    — ABC News, 22 June 2026
  • The Australian system, developed over 40 years, works by refracting high-frequency electromagnetic waves off the ionosphere to detect distant objects that are invisible to conventional radars because of Earth’s curvature.
    — Rod McGuirk, Los Angeles Times, 23 June 2026
  • One bolt reached an extraordinary -303 kilo-ampères (the minus sign indicates the lightning's polarity, not that the current was less than zero), producing an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that lit up the ionosphere.
    — Daisy Dobrijevic, Space.com, 25 Nov. 2025
  • For the last 11 years, the spacecraft has explored how Mars' upper atmosphere and ionosphere interact with the Sun and the solar wind to examine the loss of the Martian atmosphere into space, according to NASA.
    — Charna Flam, PEOPLE, 12 Dec. 2025
  • Schumann Resonance Time Acceleration Schumann resonances are natural, low-frequency electromagnetic hums that form in the cavity between Earth’s surface and the ionosphere (50-600 miles above the surface).
    — Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 4 Sep. 2025
  • Erin Lay, PhD, a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author of the study, explained that scientists have long known the first pulse of a TIPP is caused by the lightning signal traveling through the ionosphere and reaching the satellite directly.
    — Georgina Jedikovska, Interesting Engineering, 15 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'ionosphere.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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