Near Earth space plasma monitoring under COST 296

<p>This review paper presents the main achievements of the near Earth space plasma monitoring under COST 296</p> <p>Action. The outputs of the COST 296 community making data, historical and real-time, standardized and available\&nbsp;to the ionospheric community for their research, applications and modeling purposes are presented. The contribution\&nbsp;of COST 296 with the added value of the validated data made possible a trusted ionospheric monitoring\&nbsp;for research and modeling purposes, and it served for testing and improving the algorithms producing real-time</p> <p>data and providing data users measurement uncertainties. These value added data also served for calibration and</p> <p>validation of space-borne sensors. New techniques and parameters have been developed for monitoring the near\&nbsp;Earth space plasma, as time dependent 2D maps of vertical total electron content (vTEC), other key ionospheric\&nbsp;parameters and activity indices for distinguishing disturbed ionospheric conditions, as well as a technique for improving\&nbsp;the discrepancies of different mapping services. The dissemination of the above products has been developed\&nbsp;by COST 296 participants throughout the websites making them available on-line for real-time applications.</p>