The Challenges of Addressing Satellite Operator Needs, and their Impacts on Recent and Planned Upgrades to the WAM-IPE Forecast System

Models of physical systems can only provide data without context, while it is the frameworks around those models that ultimately define our forecasting capabilities: concepts of operations, post-processing, visualization, and more. The Space Weather Prediction Center's (SWPC's) WAM-IPE Forecast System (WFS) has been providing a deterministic operational specification of neutral density for several years. Past upgrades to the modeling suite have focused on meeting the needs of the satellite operator community, but there exist significant shortcomings in forecast capabilities due to realities both internal and external to SWPC's modeling efforts. Through the lens of difficulties encountered during the May 2024 G5 event, we'll highlight how the WFS is being used for decisions by satellite operators in the low-earth orbit regime, and discuss some immediate and long-term challenges of forecasting extreme geomagnetic events shaped by end-user needs.