Researchers at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) in Kühlungsborn are participating in a weighty project. Thanks to EU funding, they are tinkering with new models for two years in a collaborative project to better predict traveling disturbances in the atmosphere. 

T-FORS (Traveling Ionospheric Disturbance Forecasting System) is the name of the project funded with about 82,000 Euros from the Horizon Europe program of the European Union, in which the IAP department of Radar Remote Sensing is participating under the direction of Prof. Dr. Jorge Chau. In the coming months, the scientists will explore migrating ionospheric disturbances together with nine partners from across Europe.

"These disturbances originate from either solar forcing or lower atmospheric weather phenomena. It has a direct impact on the high frequency radio wave propagation in the ionosphere," says Dr. Sivakandan Mani, who leads the research project at the IAP. "The perturbations we measure are affected by different factors such as geomagnetic disturbances and dynamics in the atmosphere. If we can better understand the generation and propagation characteristics of these variables, we can provide early predictions and warnings.“

To that end, the international research team is collaborating, among others, with the German Federal Police. Jens Mielich is overseeing the project from the IAP field site in Juliusruh on the island of Rügen. "In the end, it should be possible to make predictions in real time that can also be used by the European Space Agency," he says.