Global Navigation Satellite Systems Contributing To Space Weather Services For Civil Aviation

Abstract

With continuously increasing global air traffic the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has acted to incorporate safety from space weather into its aviation regulations. In November 2019 three global service centers started operational monitoring of space weather with the task to provide aviation community with advisories in the case of strong solar storms. Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have a central role in ICAO's space weather context as an important asset in probing ionospheric space weather, but also as a critical system supporting avionics while being challenged by ionospheric variations. In this paper we describe how ICAO space weather services have been built and are maintained by the PECASUS (Partnership for Excellence in Civil Aviation Space weather User Services) consortium. Concerning GNSS, the ICAO guidance is to follow the variations in Total Electron Content (TEC) and in phase and amplitude scintillation. In our future prospects we discuss the opportunities to link those parameters more closely with the parameters that the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS) is using to characterize space weather activity.