[IGSMAIL-4767]: IGS Ionospheric information

[Manuel Hernandez Pajares]

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IGS Electronic Mail      18 Dec 04:33:35 PST 2003      Message Number 4767
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Author: Manuel Hernandez-Pajares

Dear Colleagues,

There are several practical news about the IGS ionospheric products
that I would like to comment briefly, due to its potential interest
following the suggestions of several colleagues (I apologize if you
receive this e-mail more than once):

	1) As you might probably know, the IGS global TEC maps
	(with a resolution of 2 hours x 5 deg. x 2.5 deg. in UT x Lon.x Lat.)
	are available as an additional IGS official product since April 2003.

	They are being posted now at the official IGS servers such as CDDISA:

	ftp://cddisa.gsfc.nasa.gov/gps/products/ionex/

	being the combined IGS and the analysis center ionex files
	stored in the corresponding year and day subdirectories.

	2) The generation of a rapid IGS product with an intended
        latency of less than 24 hours has been started very recently
	in an initial testing phase (using an automatic software coded
	from scratch), following the suggestion of the IGS GB during the
	meeting at Nice, in April 2003.

	The corresponding rapid combined global TEC maps (with the same
	resolution than the final ones) can be accessed from the
        new unofficial rapid IGS server ftp://gage152.upc.es/rapid_iono_igs/
	at UPC (please notice the the corresponding rapid IGS ionex files
	igrgDOY0.YYi.Z, for year YY and day of year DOY, are stored in
	the corresponding subdirectories for the year YEAR and day DOY).

	There are also additional information such as comparisons with JASON
	TEC (performed presently with a latency of about 40 hours) and
	movies which are stored in a provisional format (this can change
	during the next weeks). Moreover additional information can be
	incorporated during the next weeks as well.

        During the first week of generation of these preliminary rapid IGS
        maps, the combined product has been typically obtained by the noon
        (latencies of about 12 hours) with the two available ionospheric
        analysis centers (CODE and UPC). It is expected than two additional
        centers (JPL and ESA) will provide its rapid product for the
	rapid IGS combination during the next days or weeks.

Additional information and several related links are provided now in a
simple Web document at http://gage152.upc.es/~ionex3/igs_iono/igs_iono.html

Don't hesitate to ask or suggest any related question about, which can be
very helpful to improve the quality of the IGS ionospheric products.

Best regards,

Manuel


============================================================================
Manuel Hernandez-Pajares       IGS Ionosphere WG chairman

E-mail: manuel at mat.upc.es      Res. group of Astronomy & GEomatics, UPC/gAGE
http://maite152.upc.es/~manuel Jordi Girona 1-3, Mod. C-3 Campus Nord
Tel./Fax 34-93-4016029/5981    E08034-Barcelona (Spain)