TEC specification over Europe: a procedure

Ionospheric specification and forecasting are important parts of space weather research that seek to specify and predict conditions in the ionosphere and to determine their effects on radio wave propagation. This formidable task can be partly solved by continuous monitoring of the ionospheric state in conjunction with empirical relations. The author describes a procedure for ionospheric vertical total electron content (TEC) specification over Europe aimed to be used in different propagation applications. TEC specification over Europe is intended to provide the total electron content in an operational environment using data from the International Global Positioning System (GPS) Service for Geodynamics (IGS) with a global ground station network as input. Specification refers to the fusion and visualization of available observations into a map representation of the ionospheric state over Europe at the time of the observations or with a maximum delay of up to about 24 hours. It is designed for models of operations that include post-analysis and real-time. The application of this procedure to record and study ionospheric total electron changes during the extreme 6 April 2000 disturbance is shown.