Ionospheric Bubble Probability (IBP)
The ionospheric bubble probability statistical model is a Swarm L2 product, named IBP_CLI. The output of the Ionospheric Bubble Probability (IBP) product is an index, that depends on the day of year or the month of the year, geographic longitude, local time and solar flux index.
The output floating point index ranges 0-1 and characterizes the percentage probability of low latitude bubble occurence at the specified time, location and solar flux.
This empirical IBP model has been derived from magnetic observations obtained by the CHAMP and Swarm missions as described in Stolle et al. (2024). In addition to the magnetic observations, the IBP model has recently been expanded to incorporate electron density observations from Swarm using a machine learning (ML) framework. The ML component of IBP model is found to be more sensitive in detecting weaker plasma bubbles that do not have a strong imprint in the magnetic field. The models are representative for the altitude range 350 - 500 km and low geographic latitudes of +/- 45 degree.