A Baseline Space Weather Forecast Capability

Because of the great cost to “operationalize” space weather forecasting products, operational space weather forecasters must rely on many outdated models and techniques. There are several efforts to correct this and provide operational space weather organizations with up to date capabilities. One such effort is being pursued by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Weather Forecasting Laboratory (SWFL). As an important first step in SWFL's effort to create a forecasting capability for the DoD we are developing a baseline forecast capability that will serve as a standard from which our forecasting improvements will be measured. This baseline will be comprised of current operational models where they are available and otherwise vetted community models where operational capabilities do not currently exist. Here we describe the SWFL and its baseline capability and then discuss the validation effort to date.