Mapping of ionospheric parameters for space weather predictions: A concise review

Reviewing briefly the recent progress in a joint program of specifying the polar ionosphere primarily on the basis of ground magnetometer data, this paper emphasizes the importance of processing data from around the world in real time for space weather predictions. The output parameters from the program include ionospheric electric fields and currents and field-aligned currents. These real-time records are essential for running computer simulations under realistic boundary conditions and thus for making numerical predictions of space weather efficient as reliable as possible. Data from individual ground magnetometers as well as from the solar wind are collected and are used as input for the KRM and AMIE magnetogram-inversion algorithms, through which the two-dimensional distribution of the ionospheric parameters is calculated. One of the goals of the program is to specify the solar-terrestrial environment in terms of ionospheric processes and to provide the scientific community with more than what geomagnetic activity indices and statistical models indicate.