US-Total Electron Content Product (USTEC)

The US Total Electron Content (US-TEC) product is designed to specify TEC over the Continental US (CONUS) in near real-time. The product uses a Kalman Filter data assimilation model, described in the Technical Documentation. This technique is driven by data from ground-based Global Positioning System (GPS) dual frequency receivers. The primary data stream comes from the Maritime and Nationwide Differential GPS (M/NDGPS) real time network of stations operated by the US Coast Guard (USCG). As of January 2006, there were about 130 stations ingested into the model. This number has been gradually increasing and will be augmented by Federal Aviation Administration/Wide Area Augmentation System (FAA/WAAS) data, and new stations in areas with poor coverage. This product has evolved through a collaboration between the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the National Geodetic Survey (NGS), the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (formerly National Geophysical Data Center), and the Global Systems Division (GSD).