Assessment of Current Space Weather Modeling Capabilities: Ionosphere-Thermosphere

Abstract:

In efforts to assess current space weather modeling capabilities, the CCMC (Community Coordinated Modeling Center) is leading the newly established “International Forum for Space Weather Modeling Capabilities Assessment.” This presentation will focus on outcomes of the International Forum on validation of modeled foF2 and TEC during the 2013 March storm event. For the validation study, we use various ionospheric models ranging from empirical to physics-based, coupled ionosphere-thermosphere and data assimilation models. We consider TEC and foF2 changes and percentage changes compare to quiet-time background, and the maximum and minimum percentage changes. We compare the modeled quantities with ground-based observations of vertical GNSS TEC (provided by MIT Haystack Observatory) and foF2 data (provided by GIRO, Global Ionospheric Radio Observatory) at the 12 locations selected in middle latitudes of the American and European-African longitude sectors. To quantitatively evaluate the models’ performance, we calculate skill scores including Correlation Coefficient, RMSE, ratio of the modeled to observed maximum percentage changes, and timing error. Our study indicates that average RMSEs of foF2 range from about 1 MHz to 1.5 MHz. The average RMSEs of TEC are between ~5 TECU and ~10 TECU. Most model simulations tend to underestimate enhanced foF2 and TEC and appear to not reproduce large enhancements of TEC in the South Atlantic Anomaly region. Most of them also appear to not capture opposite responses to the storm in the eastern and western parts of North American Sector.