Real-Time Specifications of the Geospace Environment

We report the recent progress in our joint program of real-time mapping of ionospheric electric fields and currents and field-aligned currents through the Geospace Environment Data Analysis System (GEDAS) at the Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory and similar computer systems in the world. Data from individual ground magnetometers as well as from the solar wind are collected by these systems and are used as input for the KRM and AMIE magnetogram-inversion algorithms, which calculate the two-dimensional distribution of the ionospheric parameters. One of the goals of this program is to specify the solar-terrestrial environment in terms of ionospheric processes, providing the scientific community with more than what geomagnetic activity indices and statistical models provide. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.