Space weather influence on the ionosphere and its potential threats to GNSS services: focus on the Portuguese territories
11 October 2023, Coimbra (online), Portugal

Space Weather is an umbrella term for phenomena observed in the near-Earth space (magnetosphere), in the Earth's atmosphere (ionosphere and lower atmosphere) and even in the upper lithosphere related to variations of the solar activity (solar flares, coronal mass ejections, etc.) and interplanetary medium.
Space Weather is one of the main drivers of ionospheric disturbances which, in turn, can drastically affect the quality of the signal between a ground-based device and the GNSS satellites.

Two research projects are currently carried out at the Institute of Astrophysics / University of Coimbra (IA-UC) aimed to study space weather-driven variations of the ionosphere at Portuguese territory (Continental Portugal, Azores and Madeira) and their possible consequences for users and operators of GNSS-based services.
The purpose of the workshop is the dissemination of the preliminary results of these projects to a wide community of operators and users of GNSS-based services.

Topics:

• Ionospheric response to space weather events;
• Total electron content (TEC) gradients;
• Ionospheric scintillations;
• New models to forecast ionospheric parameters.

For detailed information check the workshop website.