Towards forecasting and mapping ionospheric space weather under cost actions

Past COST projects 238 (PRME) and 251 (IITS) encompassed a variety of efforts to forecast and map the ionospheric plasma response to disturbed geophysical conditions over the European region. In a number of case studies they provided useful guidelines for what could be achieved by different theoretical, empirical and artificial neural network techniques. New COST 271 action on ‘Effects of the upper atmosphere on terrestrial and Earth-space communications’ which began in the early months of the year 2000 is focusing upon efforts to map the ionospheric space weather conditions over Europe in near-real-time and to forecast these conditions a few hours ahead. The purpose of the paper is to present some of the findings from the previous COST 251 study and the plans for the new one (COST 271).