3-D Ionosphere Imaging with a new TEC-based Ionospheric Data Assimilation System (TIDAS)
Accurately imaging the 3-D ionospheric variation and its temporal evolution has always been a challenging task for the space weather community. Recent decades have witnessed tremendous steps forward in implementing ionospheric data assimilation, with the rapid growth of ionospheric data availability from multiple ground-based and space-borne sources. This presentation will describe a new TEC-based ionospheric data assimilation system (TIDAS) for 3-D regional ionospheric imaging. TIDAS can yield high-fidelity altitude-resolved electron density distribution in the target region, which is a powerful tool for better specification and understanding of ionospheric dynamical variations, as well as for space weather.
Dr. Ercha Aa is a research scientist at MIT Haystack Observatory. He earned his Ph.D. in
Space Physics from Peking University in 2012. He then worked at the Chinese Academy of Sciences
and the University of Michigan, respectively. He joined MIT Haystack Observatory in 2019. Dr.
Ercha Aa’s focus of research is the Earth’s ionosphere and thermosphere physics and space
weather. He has studied ionosphere-thermosphere storm effects, multi-scale ionospheric plasma
irregularities and traveling ionospheric disturbances, ionospheric empirical modeling and data
assimilation, subauroral and mid-latitude ionospheric dynamics through a combination ground-
based and space-borne observations.