The Dynamical Ionosphere

Massimo Materassi received his PhD in theoretical physics, and served his post-doc in near-Earth plasma turbulence. He is now a researcher for the National Research Council in Italy. His research interests include space weather dynamics, turbulence, information analysis, theoretical dynamical models, plasma physics, and dissipative processes. Biagio Forte is a Research Fellow for the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Bath. His research interests include physics and chemistry of the upper ionised atmosphere, plasma turbulence and instabilities in magnetized plasmas, trans-ionospheric radio waves propagation, radio wave scintillation (ionospheric and interplanetary), radio occultation, and space weather effect mitigation. Anthea J. Coster is Assistant Director and Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, which collaborates with faculty and staff in various departments and laboratories at MIT and includes a 37-meter radio telescope for observation. Her research interests include physics of the ionosphere, magnetosphere, and thermosphere, GPS positioning and measurement accuracy, space weather and storm time effects, and magnetosphere and ionosphere coupling. Susan Skone is Associate Professor of Geomatics Engineering at the University of Calgary. Dr. Skone's research focuses on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). Specific interests include ionosphere modeling for wide area differential GPS applications, scintillation monitoring for GPS, and water vapour estimation for GPS meteorology. Dr. Skone is also involved in several national and international working groups, and is active in Women in Science and Engineering activities at the University of Calgary.

The Earth’s Ionosphere, An Overview 1. Introduction 2. Day-to-day Variability of the Ionosphere 3. Ionospheric Conjugate Point Science: Hemispheric Coupling 4. Status and Future Directions 5. Mid-Latitude Ionospheric Features: Natural Complexity In Action 6. Empirical Ionospheric  Models 7. Wrap Up

Global Complexity 8. Complex Dynamics of the Sun-Earth Interaction 9. Storms and Sub-storms 10. Geomagnetically Induced Currents

Local Irregularities 11. From instabilities to irregularities 12. Equatorial F region Irregularities 13. Scintillation Theory

The Future Era of Ionospheric Science 14. The Complex Ionosphere 15. New high resolution techniques to probe the ionosphere 16. Advanced Statistical Tools in Near-Earth Space Science 17. Ionospheric Science in the age of Big Data 18. Scintillation Modeling 19. Multiscale Analysis of the Turbulent Ionospheric Medium 20. The future Ionospheric Physics