92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Monday, 23 January 2012
New Space Weather Data Sources and Products for Communication and Navigation Systems
Hall E (New Orleans Convention Center )
Jennifer Meehan, Utah State University, Logan, UT; and D. Hansen, W. K. Tobiska, J. Fulgham, R. W. Schunk, J. J. Sojka, H. Carlson, V. Eccles, D. Rice, L. C. Gardner, L. Scherliess, L. Zhu, C. Tschan, D. Bouwer, and R. Shelley

The Space Weather Center (SWC) at Utah State University is developing new, essential fully operational real-time products for customers that will help mitigate adverse space weather effects on radio communication and navigation systems. Physics-based models of the ionosphere as well as data assimilation are used to create such products and come at a critical time of an approaching solar maximum. Smartphone and iPad apps demonstrate the new space weather products for HF radio and GPS navigation users via real-time and forecast applications on web browsers. Our team shows the wealth of new information available, including global and regional HF signal propagation strength at various frequencies. This information can be obtained in real-time or in a 3-hour forecast. Improvements to GPS uncertainty characterization in real-time are demonstrated, especially capabilities that can improve use of signals affected by scintillation. In addition to the SpaceWx smartphone and iPad app linking together the four major space environment domains (sun, solar wind, magnetosphere, atmosphere) it also includes information relevant to dose rate radiation exposures to commercial air flight crews and frequent flyers.

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