CTIP Model

The CTIP (Coupled Thermosphere Ionosphere Plasmasphere) model can be run via AstroGrid. CTIP is used by many Solar-Terrestrial-Physics (STP) scientists and is available via Astrogrid thanks to researchers at UCL's Applied Physics Laboratory and the UKSSDC at RAL.

CTIP is run in a "steady state" by means of a python script. CTIP can be run in two modes:

• CTIP Mode A accepts 2 input parameters: the Day Number (between 1 and 365) and the Solar Flux F10.7 (between 50 and 300, but might work for lower or higher values).
• CTIP Mode B takes one input parameter: the start date for the model run, typed in in the format: 2003-07-28. When the job is submitted, values of the F10.7 flux and the Kp index are automatically retrieved from the UKSSDC data centre at RAL and passed to the model. The output produced is for the 10 days after the start date.

What you need to run CTIP via Astrogrid

• A community account: this will give you access to your VO Workspace (VOSpace) where the output files will be written once the model has completed. See: Getting a community account.
• Python needs to be installed on your machine: at least version 2.4. To find out which version of python you have on your computer, type in 'python -V' at the command line.
• You need to have the AstroGrid VODesktop running. Download VODesktop here.

Note: the astrogrid python egg module is not required for running the scripts attached to this page: just python 2.4 will be fine.

Python scripts for running CTIP

• CTIP mode A
  • Download the python script: ctip-modea.py
  • Start VODesktop then run the script as follows:

    python ctip-modea.py 82 120
    

    where 82 is the day-of-year and 120 is the F10.7 flux.

• CTIP mode B
  • Download the python script: ctip-modeb.py
  • Start VODesktop then run the script as follows:

    python ctip-modeb.py 2005-10-23
    

    where 2005-10-23 is the required date.