TEC Depletion Generated by the Total Solar Eclipse of 2 July 2019

A total solar eclipse occurred at the ascending node of the Moon's orbit on 2 July 2019, with an eclipse magnitude of 1.0459. The totality was visible from the southern Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand to the Coquimbo Region (Chile) and Central Argentina at sunset, with the maximum of 4 min 32 s visible from the Pacific Ocean. The recent Great American Eclipse, 21 August 2017, clearly showed that the ionosphere is strongly affected by the totality. In order to explore the ionospheric signature of the 2019 eclipse, we use data of ∼110 GNSS stations seeing multiple GPS and GLONASS satellites to visualize the eclipse signature on the total electron content (TEC) in the southern hemisphere. The location of the South American GNSS stations, at the end of the path of totality, right before sunset, makes the eclipse signature in the ionospheric TEC act like an early sunset with 15 TEC‐Unit variations, corresponding to 40% of background ionization. The effect reaches only four TEC‐Units, corresponding to 25%–40% of background ionization, for the more westerly observations, where we clearly highlight the effect of the eclipse in the ionosphere and the following recovery to normality. By applying the omega‐k analysis, we can find TIDs with wavelengths of around 100 km and larger than 200 km and with periods of 20–50 min, which supports the results of the Great American Eclipse. Using different grids, we can also prove the robustness of the omega‐k analysis.