Tenth international digisonde training seminar at UMass lowell reviews state of real-time mapping of the ionosphere

Users of ionospheric data from the digisonde network assembled at the University of Massachusetts Lowell to learn about the latest available tools for the processing and analysis of different data collected by the network of digisondes. These modern ionosondes derive vertical electron-density profiles in real time. Recent improvements in the automatic ionogram scaling algorithm ARTIST have significantly increased the reliability of the auto-scaled data, making them more useful in combination with models for ionospheric nowcasting. Vertical and horizontal F-region drift velocities are a new real-time output of the digisondes. The "ionosonde drift" is derived from the measured Doppler-frequency shift and angle of arrival of ionospherically reflected HF echoes, a method similar to that used by coherent VHF and incoherent-scatter radars. A three-day seminar explained the newly available techniques and software packages.