Thickness parameters in the empirical modeling of bottomside electron density profiles

Abstract All empirical models of the ionosphere electron density profile rely, among other parameters, on the efficient description of the thickness of the F2 layer that controls the profile shape. Considering the trend towards data assimilation in such models to give near real time 3D specification of the electron density, the efficiency of such description becomes particularly important. This paper discusses the thickness parameters of the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) and NeQuick2 empirical models and their effects on the modeled electron density profiles by comparing them with experimentally derived profiles. A simple technique to optimize the use of experimental data to forecast electron density specifications is proposed. It is based on the previous output of the assimilation of NmF2, hmF2, with the addition of the experimentally computed thickness parameters of the IRI and NeQuick models. This technique appears to be able to forecast reasonably well the electron density profile at least 30 min ahead of a given epoch. The possible use of such electron density profile forecast, for applications in HF radio waves propagation is suggested.