Project AFFECTS

EU-funded collaborative space weather project AFFECTS with a focus on forecasting the state of the ionosphere over Europe and addressing the needs of European GNSS users has successfully implemented in SRI during 2011–2014 years.

The project aimed to improve knowledge of the impact of solar activity on the coupled magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere system. In its framework we achieved an unprecedented quantitative understanding of the impacts of space weather effects on the Earth's ionosphere and provided reliable forecasts of ionospheric conditions on the required time scales, which can be accessed by users for their relevant applications. As a result of the project the following forecast products were generated:

• · geomagnetic indices Dst (4 hours) and Kp (3 hours);

• · realtime auroral electrojet position;

• · TEC over Europe (to 24 hours);

• · automatic warnings for GNSS users;

The links to these products can be found in the project website http://www.affects-fp7.eu/
Project timeline: March 2011–February 2014.

Project partners:

1. University of Göttingen Institute for Astrophysics, Germany (UGOE) – Project Coordinator.

2. Royal Observatory of Belgium, Belgium (ROB).

3. Space Research Institute of NAS of Ukraine and SSA of Ukraine, Ukraine (SRI NASU-SSAU).

4. Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques, Germany (FhG).

5. University of Tromsø Geophysical Observatory, Norway (UoT).

6. German Aerospace Center, Neustrelitz Office, Germany (DLR).

7. EADS Astrium ST, Friedrichshafen Office, Germany (ASTRIUM).

8. NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, USA (NOAA-SWPC) – External Collaborator.

9. Planetarium Hamburg, Germany (PH) – Education and Public Outreach Centre.

In the project SRI was responsible for the provision of a geomagnetic forecast tool, which is used operationally both as a part of the Forecast System Ionosphere developed by DLR and on its own as a standalone service.

The geomagnetic forecast service developed by SRI is available to users via the STAFF viewer: http://www.staff.oma.be/

SRI also developed the AFFECTS Space Weather Mobile App for Android OS, which provides a realtime access to all the services developed in the project. It can be downloaded by visiting the linkhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.afects.forecasts or by scanning the QR-code below