Progress and Challenges Toward a Future Integrated Space Weather Forecasting System
Manolis K. Georgoulis
RCAAM of the Academy of Athens, Athens, Greece
Abstract
Humanity‘s ever-increasing dependence on space infrastructure and technology makes it paramount to implement ways, tools and services to forecast the continuously changing conditions of the near-Earth space in response to the driving of the solar wind. This is an intimidating task, spanning over a vast range of length and time scales in terms of physical effects involved. It is also a cross-disciplinary endeavor, requiring expertise from various areas of physics, computer science, mathematics and statistics [1], [2].
While current efforts focus on the three outcomes of adverse space weather, namely solar flares, coronal mass
ejections (CMEs) and solar energetic particle (SEP) events, often tackling their prediction independently, it is important to acknowledge that the three manifestations share an intimate physical connection [3], [4]. Ideally, then, their forecast should be treated jointly and self-consistently, along the lines of an integrated space weather forecasting system that has yet to be implemented.
We present possible ways in which this could be achieved, in terms of computational effectiveness without severe loss of accuracy, credibility and complementarity to avoid effort duplication in the presence of redundancy and the use of partial advances in flare, CME and SEP forecasting around the world.
References
[1] Barnes, G., Leka, K. D., Schrijver, C. J., et al.: 2016, Astrophys. J., 829, article id. 89
[2] Georgoulis, M. K. & the FLARECAST Team: 2016, EGU Gen. Assembly, p.10401
[3] Papaioannou, A., Sandberg, I., Anastasiadis, A. et al.: 2016, J. Space Wea. Space Clim., 6, id. A42
[4] Anastasiadis, A., Papaioannou, A., Sandbeg, I., Georgoulis, M. K., Tziotziou, K., Kouloumvakos, A. & Jiggens, P.: 2017, Solar Phys., in press
Acknowledgements
Parts of the work reviewed here have received support by ESA’s A-EFFort and FOSPEF projects (ESA Contrant Nos.4000111994/14/D/MPR and 4000109641/13/NL/AK), ESA SAWS-ASPECS project, currently under implementation, and the EU Horizon 2020 FLARECAST project, under Grant Agreement No. 640216.
