Modification of the solar activity indices in the International Reference Ionosphere IRI and IRI-Plas models due to recent revision of sunspot number time series

Abstract

The International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) imports global effective ionospheric IG12 index based on ionosonde measurements of the critical frequency foF2 as a proxy of solar activity. Similarly, the global electron content (GEC), smoothed by the sliding 12-months window (GEC12), is used as a solar proxy in the ionospheric and plasmaspheric model IRI-Plas. GEC has been calculated from global ionospheric maps of total electron content (TEC) since 1998 whereas its productions for the preceding years and predictions for the future are made with the empirical model of the linear dependence of GEC on solar activity. At present there is a need to re-evaluate solar and ionospheric indices in the ionospheric models due to the recent revision of sunspot number (SSN2) time series, which has been conducted since July 1, 2015 [Clette et al., 2014]. Implementation of SSN2 instead of the former SSN1 series with the ionospheric model could increase model prediction errors. A formula is proposed to transform the smoothed SSN212 series to the proxy of the former basic SSN112=R12 index, which is used by the IRI and IRI-Plas models for long-term ionospheric predictions. Regression relationships are established between GEC12, the sunspot number R12, and the proxy solar index of 10.7 cm microwave radio flux, F10.712. Comparison of calculations by the IRI-Plas and IRI models with observations and predictions for Moscow during solar cycles 23 and 24 has shown the advantage of implementation of GEC12 index with the IRI-Plas model.