The European Ionosonde Service: nowcasting and forecasting ionospheric conditions over Europe for the ESA Space Situational Awareness services

The Earth’s ionosphere is a magnetoionic medium imbedded in a background neutral atmosphere, exhibiting very interesting refractive properties, including anisotropy, dispersion, and dissipation. As such, it poses a challenge for several radio systems that make use of signal transmission through all or some portion of the medium. It is important therefore to develop prediction systems able to inform the operators of such systems about the current state of the ionosphere, about the expected effects of forthcoming space weather disturbances and about support long-term planning of operations and data post-processing projects for improving modelling and mitigation techniques.