Global Ionosphere Maps of vertical electron content combined in real-time from the RT-GIMs of CAS, CNES, UPC-IonSAT, and WHU International GNSS Service (IGS) centers (from Jan 3 to Feb 2, 2021)

The datasets consists on 31 daily files, in IONEX format (http://ftp.aiub.unibe.ch/ionex/draft/ionex11.pdf) , corresponding to one month of global ionospheric maps (GIM) of vertical total electron content (VTEC) computed in real-time from the assessed and combined real-time GIMs generated by four analysis centers. Indeed, the Real-Time Working Group (RTWG) of International GNSS Service (IGS) is dedicated to providing high-quality data, high-accuracy products for Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) navigation, positioning, timing, and Earth observations. As one of the important part of real-time products, the IGS combined Real-Time Global Ionosphere Map (RT-GIM) have been generated by real-time weighting technique with the help of RT-GIMs from IGS real-time ionosphere centers including the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), and Wuhan University (WHU). Compared with IGS rapid Global Ionosphere Maps (GIMs) (corg, ehrg, emrg, esrg, igrg, jprg, uhrg, uprg, uqrg, whrg) and IGS final combined GIM (igsg), the IGS combined RT-GIM (irtg) is equivalent to the post-processed GIMs and even better than some rapid GIMs. The IGS RT-GIMs are reliable sources of real-time global VTEC information and has great potential for real-time applications including range error correction for transionospheric radio signals (such as GNSS positioning, search and rescue, air traffic, radar altimetry, and radioastronomy), the monitoring of space weather (such as geomagnetic and ionospheric storms, ionospheric disturbance) and detection of natural hazards on a global scale (such as hurricanes/typhoons, ionospheric anomalies associated with earthquakes)