Products and services provided by the ‘Space Weather Application Center – Ionosphere’ (SWACI)

Abstract

The ‘Space Weather Application Center – Ionosphere’ (SWACI) is a joint project of the Institute of Communications and Navigation and the German Remote Data Center of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The project is essentially supported by the German State Government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern until the end of 2010. The project shall provide nowcasts, forecasts, and alerts on the ionospheric state as well as related space weather issues. Typical data products include European maps of the Total Electron Content (TEC) and corresponding derivatives such as latitudinal and longitudinal gradients and rate of change, updated every 5 minutes. These service products are derived from 1s sampled data obtained from the International GNSS Service (IGS) and national networks such as the German SAPOS or ascos networks in streaming mode. Space based data products include vertical electron density profiles retrieved from radio occultation measurements onboard CHAMP and GRACE satellites as well as 3D reconstructions of the topside ionosphere using GPS navigation data onboard CHAMP. In order to better understand vertical electron density profile changes during ionospheric storms, the equivalent slab thickness over the ionosonde station Juliusruh/Germany is offered as an operational product updated every 15 minutes. In addition to the processing of GNSS data, also beacon measurements from various satellites such as NIMS (former NNSS) satellites and COSMIC are provided. High rate GNSS measurements (20-50 Hz) performed along a North-South chain of ground stations provide actual information on scintillation activity over Europe. Although the SWACI service will be fully operational by the end of 2010, some SWACI products are already available for interested users at a service level reached so far. An outlook to new products planned to be released next time will be given. The Data Information and Management System (DIMS) used in SWACI enables also the access to historical data (http://swaciweb.dlr.de). SWACI is connected to SWENET as continuous data provider of TEC data products. The service will take benefit from more intensified and coordinated international cooperation.