EIS Near Real-Time TEC Maps

The integrated electron density is provided in the form of TEC or partial TEC. The following products have been developed and implemented in the EIS user interface. They are made available every 15 min with a latency of about 45 min. (a) Near real time maps (image and ASCII file) of the bottomside TEC based on Digisonde input and mapping. The bottomside TEC is the integrated electron density from 90 km to the hmF2 altitude. (b) Near real time maps (image and ASCII file) of the topside TEC based on TaD model. The topside TEC is the integrated electron density from the hmF2 altitude up to the O+/H+ transition height. (c) Near real time maps (image and ASCII file) of plasmaspheric TEC based on TaD model. The plasmaspheric TEC is the integrated electron density from the O+/H+ transition height up to 20,000 km. (d) Near real time maps (image and ASCII file) of the total TEC. The total TEC is the integrated electron density from 90 km up to 20,000 km. The TEC and partial TEC maps are made available through the implementation of the TaD model. TaD is a topside profiler based on empirical equations derived from the analysis of the topside sounding data from the Alouette/ISIS database and ingests the Digisonde observations at the height of the maximum electron density and the TEC-GNSS estimates to adjust the profiler with the real-time conditions of the ionosphere (Kutiev and Marinov, 2007; Kutiev et al. 2006; Belehaki et al. 2006; Kutiev et al. 2009a; Kutiev et al. 2009b; Belehaki et al. 2009; Kutiev et al. 2012; Belehaki et al. 2012). The algorithm receives as input: i) automatic scaled SAO files from all DIAS Digisondes with 15 min resolution available in real-time, ii) grids of TEC values that cover the whole European region, iii) daily value of the F10.7 solar flux, and iv) 3-hourly Kp indices (forecasted values).