We report the results of our investigations on the potential ionospheric effects caused by the 15 February 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor explosion. We used the data from a number of digisonde stations located in Europe and Russia to detect the traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) likely to have been caused by the meteor explosion. We found that certain characteristic signatures of the TIDs can be identified in individual ionogram records, mostly in the form of Y‐forking/splitting of the ionogram traces. Based on the arrival times of the disturbances, we have inferred the overall propagation speed of the TIDs from Chelyabinsk to be 171 ± 14 m/s.

Using a mechanical analogy of rolling a cylindrical barrel on a rough uneven surface, we developed a special method for detrending the GPS‐derived total electron content (TEC) data. This method is specifically designed to recognize the presence of depletions in the TEC time series data and handle them differently from wavelike features. We also demonstrate a potential application of this technique to map the detailed geographic profile of TEC depletions over the equatorial region, using the South American sector as an example.