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The Earth’s ionosphere is a magnetoionic medium imbedded in a background neutral atmosphere, exhibiting very interesting refractive properties, including anisotropy, dispersion, and dissipation. As such, it poses a challenge for several radio systems that make use of signal transmission through all or some portion of the medium. It is important therefore to develop prediction systems able to inform the operators of such systems about the current state of the ionosphere, about the expected effects of forthcoming space weather disturbances and about support long-term planning of operations and data post-processing projects for improving modelling and mitigation techniques. The European Space Agency (ESA) in the framework of the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Programme has supported the development of the European Ionosonde Service (EIS) that releases a set of products to characterise the bottomside and topside ionosphere over Europe. The Service is based on a set of prediction models driven by data from ground-based ionosondes and supportive data from satellites and spacecraft. The service monitors the foF2 and the electron density profile up to the height of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) at European middle and high latitudes and provides estimates for forthcoming disturbances mainly triggered by geo-effective Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). The model’s performance has been validated and based on these results, it was possible to issue together with the products, quality metrics characterizing the product’s reliability. The EIS products meet the requirements of various SSA service domains, especially the transionospheric radio link and the spacecraft operations. Currently, the service is freely available to all interested users, and access is possible upon registration.

A new model of plasmasphere to topside ionosphere scale heights ratio is developed, based on topside electron density (Ne) profiles deduced from the International Satellites for Ionospheric Studies (ISIS)-1 satellite measurements. The model is able to improve operational algorithms for space weather predictions. The topside ionospheric and plasmaspheric scale heights are determined by the lowest and largest gradients of measured profiles, respectively, converted in dh/dlnNe units. The new model depends on four parameters: the month of the year (M), the local time (LT), the geomagnetic latitude (glat), and the ln(O+) density (zO) at the O+-H+ ion transition height. It is designed to replace the old one-dimensional model of the ratio in the TaD (TSM-assisted Digisonde) profiler. The parameters M, LT, and glat are approximated by trigonometric basis functions, while zO is described by a polynomial. A series of models were produced with different number of coefficients (number of terms) of the basis functions. Comparison between models revealed that those with larger number of coefficients can produce unrealistic extremes of the model curves due to the non-uniform sampling of data along the axes. Further considered is the simplest model approximating M, LT, and glat by simple 24 sinusoidal functions and linearly depending on zO. The model description and its 54 coefficients are given in Appendix 1 and can be used by other users for reconstruction of plasmasphere density profiles. The main variation of the ratio along geomagnetic latitude at fixed values of the other model parameters is illustrated in a series of plots.

This paper aims at providing an overview of latest advances in space weather modeling in an operational environment in Europe, including both the introduction of new models and improvements to existing codes and algorithms that address the broad range of space weather’s prediction requirements from the Sun to the Earth. For each case, we consider the model’s input data, the output parameters, products or services, its operational status, and whether it is supported by validation results, in order to build a solid basis for future developments. This work is the output of the Sub Group 1.3 “Improvement of operational models” of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action ES0803 “Developing Space Weather Products and services in Europe” and therefore this review focuses on the progress achieved by European research teams involved in the action.

The paper describes results of the studies devoted to the solar activity impact on the Earth’s upper atmosphere and ionosphere, conducted within the frame of COST ES0803 Action. Aim: The aim of the paper is to represent results coming from different research groups in a unified form, aligning their specific topics into the general context of the subject. Methods: The methods used in the paper are based on data-driven analysis. Specific databases are used for spectrum analysis, empirical modeling, electron density profile reconstruction, and forecasting techniques. Results: Results are grouped in three sections: Medium- and long-term ionospheric response to the changes in solar and geomagnetic activity, storm-time ionospheric response to the solar and geomagnetic forcing, and modeling and forecasting techniques. Section 1 contains five subsections with results on 27-day response of low-latitude ionosphere to solar extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) radiation, response to the recurrent geomagnetic storms, long-term trends in the upper atmosphere, latitudinal dependence of total electron content on EUV changes, and statistical analysis of ionospheric behavior during prolonged period of solar activity. Section 2 contains a study of ionospheric variations induced by recurrent CIR-driven storm, a case-study of polar cap absorption due to an intense CME, and a statistical study of geographic distribution of so-called E-layer dominated ionosphere. Section 3 comprises empirical models for describing and forecasting TEC, the F-layer critical frequency foF2, and the height of maximum plasma density. A study evaluates the usefulness of effective sunspot number in specifying the ionosphere state. An original method is presented, which retrieves the basic thermospheric parameters from ionospheric sounding data.

This paper presents a series of improvements made in the Topside Sounders Model assisted by Digisonde (TaD), verification results on these improvements, and its validation at the topside part of the profile. The TaD is based on the simple empirical functions for the O+/H+ transition height (hT), the topside electron density scale height (HT), and their ratio, based on the Alouette/ISIS database. From its first release, published some years ago, TaD offers analytical formulas for obtaining the shape of the vertical plasma distribution in the topside ionosphere and plasmasphere. This first version of the TaD model (TaDv1) is using Digisonde measured parameters of the F layer maximum density, its height, and its scale height to specify the profiler’s characteristics at its lower boundary. TaDv1 models separately the O+ and H+ density profiles, providing the H+ scale height in the plasmasphere, extracted from ISIS-1 topside sounder data, as a function of geomagnetic latitude. The upgraded version of TaD (TaDv2) provides calculation of O+, H+, and He+ density distributions in transition region between topside F region and plasmasphere, extracted from the analysis of the electron density profiles from ISIS-1, and in addition approximates the plasmaspheric scale height as a function of altitude, latitude, local time, and season using an optimization procedure to achieve best fit with the measured profiles. These improvements, which concern the part of the profile above the transition height, are presented in detail in the first part of the paper. In the second part we present statistical results for the verification of the model’s improvements that show that the optimization procedure contributes to a reduction of the model error of more than two times. The model validation for the topside part of the profile is presented in the last part of this paper, comparing Incoherent Scatter Radar (ISR) electron density profiles (EDP) with the model reconstructed profiles. Comparison with measured EDP from ISR at middle latitudes gives a model error of 3TECU which is close to the GNSS measurement error. Further improvements of TaD reconstruction model are attempted in a follow-on paper, mainly targeted to the reliable operational implementation of the algorithm.

Validation results on the latest version of TaD model (TaDv2) show realistic reconstruction of the electron density profiles (EDPs) with an average error of 3 TECU, similar to the error obtained from GNSS-TEC calculated paremeters. The work presented here has the aim to further improve the accuracy of the TaD topside reconstruction, adjusting the TEC parameter calculated from TaD model with the TEC parameter calculated by GNSS transmitting RINEX files provided by receivers co-located with the Digisondes. The performance of the new version is tested during a storm period demonstrating further improvements in respect to the previous version. Statistical comparison of modeled and observed TEC confirms the validity of the proposed adjustment. A significant benefit of the proposed upgrade is that it facilitates the real-time implementation of TaD. The model needs a reliable measure of the scale height at the peak height, which is supposed to be provided by Digisondes. Oftenly, the automatic scaling software fails to correctly calculate the scale height at the peak, Hm, due to interferences in the receiving signal. Consequently the model estimated topside scale height is wrongly calculated leading to unrealistic results for the modeled EDP. The proposed TEC adjustment forces the model to correctly reproduce the topside scale height, despite the inaccurate values of Hm. This adjustment is very important for the application of TaD in an operational environment.