The characterization of the ionosphere and its impact on the propagation of radio-wave signals has received an increasing interest for satellite communications, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) applications (i.e. navigation and timing), and Earth Observation (EO) missions, especially low frequency SAR missions and GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R). 

Although the main climatological models for the mean stable part of the electron density in the ionospheric layers (e.g. IRI or NeQuick) or for the magnetic field (e.g. WMM) have been significantly improved in the past years, the inhomogeneous part, responsible for scintillation effects, can still be significantly improved, since models are based on relatively old data (e.g. WBMOD), or the climatological inputs are limited to properly characterize all latitudes and solar conditions (e.g. GISM or WAM). 

ESA’s CLIM IONO study aims to use the experimental observations of the ionosphere collected in the past years to assess the performance of climatological ionosphere models, with the focus on scintillation models, in order to evaluate their ability to properly support future needs, to identify weak areas if any, to propose recommendations for improvements and to implement these improvements whenever possible in existing models. 

This study was awarded to ONERA, with UPC and RDA GmbH as part of the team. RDA was responsible for planning and collecting the results of the model validation campaign against real data.