Recent Progresses on Ionospheric Climatology Investigations

The ionosphere varies over multiple time scales, which are classified into two categories: the climatology and weather variations. In this national report, we give a brief summary of recent progresses in ionospheric climatology with focus on (1) the seasonal variations, (2) solar cycle effects, and (3) empirical modeling of the ionosphere. The seasonal variations of the ionosphere have been explored in many works to give a more detailed picture with regional and global features at various altitudes by analyzing the observation data from various sources and models. Moreover, a series of studies reported the response of the ionosphere to solar cycle variations, which revealed some novel and detailed features of solar activity dependence of ionospheric parameters at different altitudes. These investigations have improved our understanding on the states of the ionosphere and underlying fundamental processes, provided clues to future studies on ionospheric weather, and guided ionospheric modeling, forecasting and related applications.