Validation of Ionospheric Modeled TEC in the Equatorial Ionosphere During the 2013 March and 2021 November Geomagnetic Storms Space Weather

This paper presents the validation of modeled total electron content (TEC) from 14 ionospheric models, including empirical, physics-based, and data assimilation (DA) models, hosted by the NASA/NSF Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC), NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This study aims to assess the current progress and capability of the CCMC-hosted ionospheric models in capturing the storm time ionosphere during the low and moderate solar flux years. We focus on the low-latitude ionosphere (i.e., ±40° in magnetic latitude) and compare the modeled TEC with the Madrigal TEC during the 2013 March and 2021 November storms. Multiple metrics are used to quantitatively