Contribution of the Chinese Meridian Project to space environment research: Highlights and perspectives

The Chinese Meridian Project (CMP) is devoted to establishing a comprehensive ground-based monitoring network for China’s space weather research. CMP is a major national science and technology infrastructure project with the participation of more than 10 research institutions and universities led by the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. CMP is planned to be constructed in two phases: CMP phases I and II. The first phase (CMP-I) started construction in 2008 and completed in 2012, after which it entered the operation stage. The 10-year observation of CMP-I has made significant scientific discoveries and achievements in the research fields of the middle and upper atmospheric fluctuations, metal layers in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere, ionospheric disturbances and irregularities, geomagnetic disturbances, and influences of solar activity. The review summarizes the main observations and research achievements, space weather forecast modeling and methods based on CMP-I over the past 10 years, and presents a future extension perspective along with the construction of CMP-II.