GFZ Global Ionosphere Maps

DOI

This data publication contains global maps of the vertical total electron content (VTEC) of the Earth's ionosphere. They are computed at GFZ from ground GNSS data and provided on an operational basis. The dataset covers the period since the beginning of 2000 and is published in daily files.

Based on a network of around 250 GNSS stations of the tracking network of the International GNSS Service (IGS), the GFZ generates global VTEC solutions using the latest development version of the EPOS.P8 Software. Observation data from GPS, GLONASS (from 2012), and Galileo (from 2014) satellites are used. The processing is based on a rigorous least-squares approach using uncombined code and phase observations, and does not entail leveling techniques. A single-layer ionospheric model with a spherical harmonic VTEC representation is applied. VTEC values are provided with a temporal resolution of 2 hours and a spatial resolution of 2.5 degrees in latitude and 5 degrees in longitude. The processing is described in detail in Brack et al. (2021).

The solution series contains daily files ( and refer to the year and day of year) in the ionex data format (https://files.igs.org/pub/data/format/ionex1.pdf):

  • GFZ0OPSRAP_0000_01D_02H_ION.IOX.gz: rapid solution published with a delay of one day
  • GFZ0OPSFIN_0000_01D_02H_ION.IOX.gz: final solution containing the middle day of a combination of the rapid solutions of three consecutive days

The file naming follows the IGS Long Product Filename (http://acc.igs.org/repro3/Long_Product_Filenames_v1.0.pdf). All files are .gz compressed.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.1.1.2021.006
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1029/2021RS007337
Related Identifier https://isdc.gfz-potsdam.de/gnss-products/
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.1.1.2020.001
Related Identifier http://acc.igs.org/repro3/Long_Product_Filenames_v1.0.pdf
Related Identifier https://files.igs.org/pub/data/format/ionex1.pdf
Metadata Access http://doidb.wdc-terra.org/oaip/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:doidb.wdc-terra.org:7200
Provenance
Creator Brack, Andreas ORCID logo; Männel, Benjamin ORCID logo; Bradke, Markus ORCID logo; Brandt, Andre; Nischan, Thomas ORCID logo
Publisher GFZ Data Services
Contributor GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany; Brack, Andreas
Publication Year 2021
Rights CC BY 4.0; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact Brack, Andreas (GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany)
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Version 1.0
Discipline Geosciences