“…Moreover, the coefficients of the B‐spline representation resemble global VTEC maps in terms of the spatio‐temporal distribution and magnitude, which allow for inferring physical interpretations from the coefficients directly (Erdogan et al., 2020). B‐splines were applied to model ionospheric variables in various studies, for instance, modeling regional VTEC (Durmaz & Karslioglu, 2015; Goss, Schmidt, et al., 2020; Nohutcu et al., 2010; Schmidt et al., 2008; Zeilhofer et al., 2009) and global VTEC (Dettmering et al., 2014; Erdogan et al., 2017, 2020; Goss et al., 2019; Schmidt et al., 2011), the computation of corrections to a climatological reference model such as IRI (Liang et al., 2015), the estimation of key parameters of the Chapman function for electron density modeling (Limberger et al., 2013), and the combination of different space geodetic techniques for VTEC modeling (Dettmering et al., 2011).…”