Comparison of midlatitude ionospheric F region peak parameters and topside Ne profiles from IRI2012 model prediction with ground-based ionosonde and Alouette II observations

The results obtained in the study showed that the observation-model differences were significant especially for the real observed (not median) data. For practical application, it is clearly important for the IRI2012 model to be adapted to the observed F2-layer peak parameters. However, the model does not offer a simple solution to predict the shape of the vertical electron density profile in the topside ionosphere, because of the problem with the topside shape parameters.