Space Weather: Accuracy of Ionospheric Models at Mid-Latitudes over Solar, Season, Diurnal, and Geomagnetic Variabilities: Implementation of Ionospheric Metric at CCMC

Space Environment Corporation, Logan UT

Investigators

Abstract

The project will examine state-of-the-art ionospheric models (both physics based and empirical) and the National Space Weather Program (NSWP) ionospheric metrics, exploiting the large data set derived from Arecibo observations over the past 30 years. This data set has a reasonably uniform distribution over seasonal variations and disturbed conditions. This research will implement NSWP ionospheric metrics on three models, namely, the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI), the Ionospheric Forecast Model (IFM), and Coupled Ionosphere Thermosphere Plasmasphere electrodynamics (CITPe), using the entire Arecibo Incoherent Scatter Radar (ISR) database. Software will be developed to automatically select ISR data and generate quantitative observational uncertainties, based on instrument performance, statistics, and ionospheric variability. The host for this metric software system will be the Community Coordinated Model Center (CCMC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The end result of this effort will be to provide users with a reliable metric assessment of these ionospheric models.