Community Coordinated Modeling Center Activities to Assess Space Weather Forecasting Capabilities

The Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC, http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov)  founded at the dawn of the millennium as an essential element of the National Space Weather Program  is recognized as a critical U.S. space weather resource. The CCMC plays a key role in facilitating space weather research, improving space weather forecasting, and accelerating implementation of state-of-the-art models in space weather operations. Assessment and benchmarking of current state of space weather modeling, forecasting and analysis capabilities  are among  key elements of the National Space Weather Action Plan. Confidence assessment of predictive space weather models ultimately determines the value of forecasts for end users. Because of its expertise and neutrality, the CCMC performs unbiased model testing and validation on requests from operational agencies such as NOAA and USAF, and leads the space weather community in joint model validation projects that ultimately improve model accuracy, efficiency, realism, and robustness. The presentation will review  on-going event-based coordinated community-wide model validation activities and metrics studies supported by the CCMC.  The focus will be on quantification and validation of storm-driven disturbances in heliosphere and geospace environment and impacts on technologies.