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

The ‘Space Weather Application Center - Ionosphere’ (SWACI) is a joint project of the Institute of Communications and Navigation (IKN) and the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) 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 global ionospheric state as well as related space weather issues. SWACI operates a powerful Data Information and Management System (DIMS) both in real-time and post-processing modes in order to provide actual information to the customers (http://swaciweb.dlr.de). 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 data 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 via the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) Frankfurt using the NTRIP technology. Space based retrievals include vertical electron density profiles derived from radio occultation data onboard CHAMP and GRACE as well as 3D reconstructions of the topside ionosphere/plasmasphere electron density distribution between CHAMP and GPS satellite orbit heights. The equivalent slab thickness over the ionosonde station Juliusruh/Germany is offered as an operational product to better understand vertical electron density profile changes during ionospheric storms. In addition to the processing of GNSS data, also beacon measurements from various satellites such as NIMS (former NNSS) satellites and COSMIC are used to derive relative TEC along the satellite traces. Furthermore, high rate GPS measurements (20-50Hz) have been started o get information on actual scintillation activities along a North-South receiver chain in Europe. Some new products planned to be released next time will be discussed. The Web-presentation uses professional solutions of data management including modern forms of data provision. Although the SWACI service is not yet finished, SWACI is already available for interested users at an experimental service level reached so far. SWACI is connected to the Space Weather European NETwork (SWENET) by providing specific TEC data products. The service will take benefit from more intensified and coordinated international cooperation.