A near real-time global ionospheric data assimilation and forecast system

The ionosphere is currently one of the most important contents of space weather forecasting. The establishment of a reliable and accurate ionospheric characteristic parameter specification and forecast system is of great value to space science research and military and civilian radio information systems. Based on the ground-based GNSS and Global Ionospheric Radio Observatory (GIRO) digital ionosonde real-time data of the International GNSS Service Organization (RT-IGS), and International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) was chosen as the background model, China Research Institute of Radio Propagation (CRIRP) adopts Gauss-Markov-band-limited Kalman filter assimilation technology, combined with super-large-scale matrix sparse storage and processing methods, and developed a near-real-time global ionospheric data assimilation and forecast system (RT-GIDAM) on “China Electronics Cloud”. RT-GIDAM can realize the global ionospheric TEC and electron density nowcast and forecast in near real-time (with a delay of about 5min), higher spatial resolution (5°×2.5°) and time resolution (15min). The establishment of RT-GIDAM can provide data support for space physics research and related radio system applications.