Ionospheric Scintillation Nowcasting and Forecasting for Civil Aviation

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has set up a space weather service for monitoring and raising alerts in case of moderate or severe potential impact on aviation, and covering three domains: GNSS, Radiation and HF Communications. This service is operational since November 2019 and is working in a bi-weekly rotation of four global centers: SWPC (US Space Weather Prediction Center), PECASUS (consortium of 9 European States), CRC (China-Russia Consortium) and ACFJ (Australia-Canada-France-Japan). CLS (Collecte Localisation Satellites), a member of ACFJ, is a subsidiary of the French Space Agency and responsible for delivering near real-time ionospheric scintillation maps. The input data is based on a worldwide network of GNSS receivers, composed of various regional and global networks. The work presented here summarizes the adopted algorithms and pre-processing tasks leading to generate the nowcast maps. The results of a validation work are shown (comparison of indices from geodetic receivers and scintillation monitors) as well as a focus on severe events and their effect on aviation. Finally, taking advantage of a 4-years long data base, the status of a forecasting scintillation model is presented, taking care of separating the EPBs (Equatorial Plasma Bubbles) and geomagnetic storms origins.