Abstract
A novel model called PyIRI was recently developed. It offers a fully
Python alternative to the widely used FORTRAN International Reference
Ionosphere (IRI) model to construct the ionospheric electron density for
the entire day and on the entire global grid in one computation, which
has a significantly lower computational overhead. PyIRI introduced a
novel approach to the computation of the global and diurnal functions
and their matrix multiplication with Consultative Committee on
International Radio (CCIR) coefficients, that enabled this global
approach for the density specification. Since the IRI-based Real-Time
Assimilative Model (IRTAM) produces coefficients in a similar format as
CCIR coefficients, the PyIRI software was extended to be able to work
with IRTAM coefficients using the same computationally efficient
approach. This technical note describes the PyIRTAM software and shows
examples of how to use it. PyIRTAM is 21 times more efficient than the
classical IRTAM. PyIRTAM tool is made publicly available.