Operational Space Weather Forecasting: Requirements and Future Needs

Abstract:

The Met Office has over 150 years' experience in providing operational forecasting to meet the UK's terrestrial weather needs, and is developing a similar capability in space weather. Since April 2014 the Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre (MOSWOC) has issued 24/7 operational forecasts, alerts and warnings on space weather which can have impacts on electricity grids, radio communications and satellite electronics.

In this talk we will summarise the current requirements and future needs for operational space weather forecasting.

We will review what the terrestrial weather community considers as operational forecasts, and use MOSWOC as an example of the underpinning research, IT and collaborations required to accomplish this.

We will also discuss the policy, science evidence base and user support requirements needed to obtain sufficient long-term funding for operational activities, illustrating this with the UK's national risk register, Royal Academy of Engineering report, and the forthcoming IPSP economic study, as well as work done with users to ensure services match their needs. These are similar activities to those being undertaken in SWORM and the COSPAR/ILWS Space Weather Shield to Society Roadmap.

Future needs will also be considered, considering the need for operational observations, particularly focussing on the role an L5 mission could play; a chain of coupled operational models covering the Sun, Earth, and intervening space; and how these observations and models can be integrated via data assimilation.