International Reference Ionosphere From Climatology to Real-Time

ABSTRACT. The International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) is a widely used standard for the description of plasma conditions in Earth’s ionosphere and it is the official ISO (International Standardization Organization) standard for this region. The ionosphere is a particularly important part of the near-Earth space environment because of its retarding and refractive effects on electromagnetic waves which are at the core of most space-based technologies. Responding to the great demand for a reliable model for the ionosphere the two prime international unions in charge of ionospheric physics, the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), jointly initiated and supported the IRI project. IRI describes the variation of the most important plasma moments (density, temperature, velocity) in the altitude range from 50km to 2000km. In my talk I will describe the IRI model and discuss its development history, current status, and some of its applications.