GGOS Focus Area on Geodetic Space Weather Research – Current Status

Space weather is an up-to-date and interdisciplinary field of research. It describes physical processes in space mainly caused by solar radiation. Manifestations of space weather are fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field or changes in the neutral density of the thermosphere as well as the electron density of the ionosphere and plasmasphere, taking coupling processes into account.
The main objectives of the Focus Area on Geodetic Space Weather Research (FA GSWR) are (1) the development of improved ionosphere and plasmasphere models, (2) the further development of thermosphere models, (3) detailed studies for understanding the coupling processes between magnetosphere, ionosphere, plasmasphere and thermosphere and (4) an enhanced understanding of space weather events and addressing sophisticated forecast procedures.
Objective (1) aims at high-precision and high-resolution (spatial and temporal) modelling of the electron density. This allows to compute a signal propagation delay, which will be used in many geodetic applications, in particular in positioning, navigation and timing. Concerning objective (2), satellite geodesy will obviously benefit when working on precise orbit determination, but there are further technical matters such as collision analysis or re-entry calculation. Objective (3) links the magnetosphere with the first two objectives by introducing physical laws and principles such as continuity, energy and momentum equations and solving partial differential equations. Finally, objective (4) connects the results of (1), (2) and (3) to the monitoring techniques and vice versa. It further includes forecast strategies. To reach these objectives altogether four Joint Study Groups have been installed and are successfully running. In this presentation, we provide an overview about the current status of the FA GSWR.