G2B: Ionosphere Variability

Moderator:

Ioanna Tsagouri (National Observatory of Athens, Greece), tsagouri AT noa.gr

Co-Moderator(s): TBD

Advisor:

Anna Belehaki (IAASARS, National Observatory of Athens, Greece), belehaki AT noa.gr

Impact:

HF communications, HF geolocation systems
SBAS, GBAS
N-RTK systems
Radio astronomy observations

Introduction:

The Earth's ionosphere is directly affected by the solar variability, by the near-Earth space dynamics and by lower atmosphere phenomena. This, results in a complex and dynamic environment influenced by solar radiation, energy transfer, winds, waves tides, electric and magnetic fields, and plasma processes. The inferred perturbations are considered to be the effects of space weather in the ionospheric plasma.

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The global COSPAR-ILWS roadmap for 2015-2025 highlights the quantification of the state of the coupled magnetospheric-ionospheric system and the forecast of space weather effects in the ionosphere with lead time beyond 2 days as highest priority research concepts. Activities implemented in recent projects underline these challenges adding also a strong dependence on the requirements of each application affected by ionospheric perturbations, in particular navigation and communication systems. The Ionospheric Variability Cluster which is part of the ISWAT has the main objective to work towards these two research directions in order to improve the ionospheric forecasting capability in regional and global scales and to support the development of actionable products focusing on the definition of activity metrics tuned to the users’ requirements.

Objectives:

The overarching objective of this cluster is to work for the improvement of monitoring, modeling and detection capability of ionospheric space weather effects in order to meet users' requirements for nowcasting and forecasting the ionospheric storm effects, the ionospheric bubbles scintillations and the traveling ionospheric disturbances.

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Scientific developments

Assessing the prediction capabilities of global versus regional models and of physical, empirical, assimilative models or ensemble models.
Enhancing system level modeling of the ionosphere aiming at proposing a model that couples properly the ionosphere with neutral atmosphere and magnetosphere, capable to describe at least those processes that control the ionospheric electron content.
Improve the ionospheric forecasting window through the definition and forecast of ionospheric drivers in the sun, the solar wind, the magnetosphere and the lower atmosphere.

Development of actionable products

Establish a data base of system performance degradation data and ionospheric events catalogues (including ionospheric storms, travelling ionospheric disturbances bubbles and scintillations)
Develop actions for users’ awareness and for providing support to mitigation technologies
Validation of ionospheric models: specification of metrics considering users requirements; networking with users to assess the validation results and plan model improvements and development of new actionable products

Improve observational capabilities and organized access to data

Defining optimal observation capabilities for ionospheric services (ground-based monitoring facilities and space missions, especially a topside sounder system)
Data quality: how to add a quality indicator to real-time data, how to fill in the gaps in real-time
Data standardization: data model, ontology, metadata
Data preservation and access: attributing a DOI setting up the tools to easily discover and access data.

Essential Space Environment Quantities (ESEQ] / Forecasting Goals:

The maximum electron density, foF2
The height of the maximum electron density, hmF2
The height profile of the electron density, Ne(h)
The height profile of the scale height, H(h)
The O⁺/H⁺ transition height, h_T
The total electron content, TEC

Action Topics:

For list of action topics please click "Read more":

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The following action topics are currently prioritized.

Compilation of catalogues of data (ground-based and space born) with availability and access information
Compilation of catalogues of ionospheric forecasting models for large scale effects, TIDs, scintillations, bubbles with specification of the drivers, input and output characteristics, and current prediction capability (accuracy, geographic coverage, timeliness, etc)
Organization of special campaigns to assess the ionospheric models’ capabilities; are the model source code available? Are the data needed to run the models available and accessible? Is the data quality specified (completeness, validity, timeliness, consistency and integrity)?
Design of actions for enhancing the forecasting window up to few days in advance: what we need? Early forecast of drivers? More observing facilities? Improved access to data? Improved data quality?
Establishment of a repository with performance degradation effects on systems
Correlation of performance degradation effects in the technologies concerned with possible ionospheric effects
Establishment of an inventory of physical characteristics and the corresponding impacts on systems

Publications

Tsagouri, I., Belehaki, A., Themens, D. R., Jakowski, N., Fuller-Rowell, T., Hoque, M. M., ... & Shim, J. S. (2023). Ionosphere variability I: Advances in observational, monitoring and detection capabilities. Advances in Space Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2023.07.024.

Tsagouri, I., Themens, D. R., Belehaki, A., Shim, J. S., Hoque, M. M., Nykiel, G., ... & Miloch, W. J. (2023). Ionosphere Variability II: Advances in theory and modeling. Advances in Space Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2023.07.056.

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