Forecast System Ionosphere: a new system for predicting space weather

Abstract

A Forecast System Ionosphere (FSI) is developed as part of the FP7 AFFECTS project (Advanced Forecast For Ensuring Communication Through Space, http://www.affects-fp7.eu/), lead by University Göttingen. It is intended to help European citizens mitigating the impact of space weather events on its communications systems. For this purpose the FSI will operationally provide a prediction of space weather related geomagnetic and ionospheric perturbations for Europe. Solar observations and measurements are used for forecasting of geomagnetic activity and Total Electron Content (TEC). Additionally, high latitude geomagnetic monitoring and early warning for GNSS users is incorporated in the FSI. The FSI is developed as a subsystem of the SWACI service (http://swaciweb.dlr.de/), running at the DLR in Neustrelitz, using its approved system components. AFFECTS partners are contributing to the FSI either by provision of data or by delivering processing modules. This presentation will present the layout and system architecture of the FSI, describing the data input, processing, checking, archiving and output of the FSI. The actual status of work and the output of currently running processors will be demonstrated.