The International Reference Ionosphere – 45 Years of International Space Weather Collaboration

Abstract:

The International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) project was started in 1970 when the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) joined forces to establish an internationally accepted reference model for the ionosphere. COSPAR needed such a specification for the evaluation of environmental effects on spacecraft and experiments in space, and URSI for radiowave propagation studies and applications. Because of this operational needs both unions requested that IRI be based primarily on data using all available and reliable data sources from space and ground. Similar activities had been started for the Atmosphere with the COSPAR International Reference Atmosphere (CIRA) model and for the Earth’s magnetic field with the International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) model of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA).

This presentation will give a brief overview over the IRI project and the progress made since its inception. An important milestone was reached early last year when IRI was voted to become the ISO standard for the ionosphere; the International Standardization Organization (ISO) is in charge of establishing and publishing international standards. This talk will discuss the most recent status of IRI activities including the development of a Real-Time IRI and the IRI 2015 Workshop, the first COSPAR Capacity Building Workshop on a Space Weather topic, that will be held in Bangkok from November 2 to 13. The IRI model is heavily used for a wide range of applications in science, engineering and education. We will discuss some of the more important ones of these applications and present measures of success that underline the superior performance of the model and the wide acceptance in the science community and science-interested public.