We assess the ionospheric scintillation occurrence on Global Navigation Satellite Signals (GNSSs) over the Mediterranean sector under the rising phase of the current solar cycle. To the scope, we leverage on a network of three Ionospheric Scintillation Monitor Receivers (ISMRs), being part of the electronic Space Weather upper atmosphere (eSWua: eswua.ingv.it) system (Pica et al., 2021). Such ISMRs are located in Lampedusa Island (Italy, Lat: 35.52 - Lon: 12.63), Chania (Crete, Greece, Lat: 35.52, Lon: 24.04) and Nicosia (Cyprus, Lat: 35.18 - Lon: 33.38). To our knowledge, this is the first thorough assessment of the scintillation patterns in the Southern Mediterranean sector, aimed at depicting how small-scale irregularities form in the area and potentially affect the GNSS-based positioning and related application and services. We analyse the period from January 2021 to December 2023, reporting that the bulk of the scintillation occurrence is due to small-scale irregularities forming in the southernmost area of the field of view of the network. Irregularities of such a scale are formed during the evolution of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability featuring the Equatorial Plasma Bubbles (EPB), which may spill-over in the field of view (FoV) of the receivers, i.e. at low elevation angles in the southernmost azimuthal range. As observations at low elevation angles are subject to multipath mimic weak to moderate scintillation conditions, we focus exclusively on severe amplitude scintillation occurrence ( S4  > 0.7) in the azimuthal range 110°-250°, w.r.t the FoV of the receivers, reaching then down to the Saharian ionosphere. To further confirm the nature of the detected GNSS scintillation occurrence, we compare the results with the Swarm Level-2 Ionospheric Bubble Index (IBI) evaluated within the same period. In the context of the April 2023 geomagnetic storm, a worst-case scenario is also documented, illustrating the potential impact of ionospheric disturbances associated with EPBs in the Southern Mediterranean area.

The effects of the May 2024 Mother’s Day superstorm over the Mediterranean sector: from data to public communication

Signal monitoring and recording station architectures based on software-defined radio (SDR) have been proposed and implemented since several years. However, the large amount of data to be transferred, stored, and managed when high sampling frequency and high quantization depth are required, poses a limit to the performance, mostly because of the data losses during the data transfer between the front-end and the storage unit. To overcome these limitations, thus allowing a reliable, high-fidelity recording of the signals as required by some applications, a novel architecture named SMART (Signal Monitoring, Analysis and Recording Tool) based on the implementation of Docker containers directly on a Network Attached Storage (NAS) unit is presented. Such paradigms allow for a fully open-source system being more affordable and flexible than previous prototypes. The proposed architecture reduces computational complexity, increases efficiency, and provides a compact, cost-effective system that is easy to move and deploy. As a case study, this architecture is implemented to monitor RFIs on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) L1/E1 and L5/E5 bands. The sample results show the benefits of a stable, long-term capture at a high sampling frequency to characterize the RFIs spectral signature effectively.

The National Antarctic Data Center (NADC) is the ICT infrastructure designed to gather, handle, publish and provide access to the large amount of scientific data collected by several projects in the framework of the Italian Antarctic National Research Program (PRNA). Aim of the infrastructure is to provide a single integrated system that allows the final users to easily access and share data wherever they are stored. The architecture is based on a System-of-Systems (SoS) concept: a set of systems (functional nodes) interconnected together with each other by means of mediation and adaptation services running on a central infrastructure (common node). The common node is managed by the five Organizations (CNR, INGV, ENEA, OGS, MNA) that contribute to the NADC and is devoted to a regular harvesting of the metadata. Each functional node consists of an existing metadata and data management system implemented by each Organization. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) hosts one of those functional nodes and it is managing, among others, data/metadata produced by the permanent geomagnetic and ionospheric observatories installed in Antarctica since 1985. The functional nodes are interconnected and federated together by means of interfaces and standard data/metadata models. This distributed architecture allows to interconnect heterogeneous systems and digital infrastructures in a flexible, scalable and sustainable way. This paper describes the general infrastructure and, as an example of functional node, the contribution of the data management related to the Antarctic Ionospheric and Geomagnetic Observatories managed by INGV at Mario Zucchelli station (74°41′42″S, 164°06′50.4″E) and Concordia base (75°05′59.91″S, 123°19′57.38″E).

The Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) has a long tradition in collecting scientific data to support upper atmosphere physics research. In addition to the historical equipment no longer operative, an ever-growing number of permanent observatories at high, low, and middle latitudes are part of the INGV network dedicated to the ionospheric and Space Weather monitoring. The management of the data produced by such a dynamic infrastructure required the development of an IT system capable to fulfill several requirements. Among them, the capability to manage and provide access to the continuous flow of information produced by the remote instruments and, at the same time, guarantee the preservation and availability of the historical series, a valuable legacy of this scientific field. To meet these needs, the SWIT-eSWua system was developed and has recently came into operation. The SWIT (Space Weather Information Technology) database management system can store a huge amount of spatially and temporally distributed data, standardizing the observations performed by different instruments and making them available in near real-time. The system is based on open-source software and containers-based virtualization, an architecture that potentially could be deployed in other research facilities to realize a distributed ionospheric monitoring network. The eSWua (electronic Space Weather upper atmosphere) access layer includes several services that allow to share these data with the scientific community. The web-platform (www.eswua.ingv.it) allows to explore, analyse and download all the different kind of historical and real-time data collected by SWIT at multiple levels of elaboration. A dedicated RESTful web-service, a registry for the metadata, the implementation of open data policy and persistent identifiers are just some of the other components which are being integrated into this layer. This work will provide a global view of the SWIT-eSWua architecture and describe the best practices implemented toward the long-term preservation of these data and the realization of a FAIR ecosystem.