Extended Abstract (96K)3.4
Terrestrial Weather and Space Weather Fusion as an Operational Tool
Stephen S. Carr, Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Lab., Laurel, MD; and E. E. Hume
The space environment operational community lags the terrestrial weather operational community by years in observational and forecast capabilities. But with current and near-future space environment sensors on research and operational satellites, the space environment operational community can quickly accelerate through new levels of maturity by learning from the pathfinding work done by the terrestrial weather community over the past several decades. One of the issues we have learned from our terrestrial weather counterparts is that forecasts and observations must add value to the mission. With this in mind, we are currently developing an integrated system that fuses data, models and products to enhance predictive battlespace awareness for the operator. Our architecture merges forecasts for coronal mass ejections, geoeffective interplanetary shocks, geomagnetic storms, auroral oval intensity, radar propagation outages and high altitude radiation dosages, into operationally significant space environment forecasts in which we create products that show the user which systems and/or operations may be impacted by the space environment. This space environment predictive architecture complements our comprehensive terrestrial weather forecasting toolset--which includes a dust storm model used by the Department of Defense during Operation Iraqi Freedom--to make our Sun-to-Earth connections architecture operationally functional. Additionally, there is common ground between terrestrial weather and space environment forecasting, such as defining forecast accuracy. We are defining space environment forecasting metrics and developing skill scores for our forecast products similar to those currently in use by the terrestrial weather operational community.
Session 3, Space Weather Impacts, Models and Forecast Capabilities (Room 617)
Wednesday, 14 January 2004, 1:00 PM-5:30 PM, Room 617
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