UAH Forecasting Monitor in Space Weather

Submitted by Consuelo Cid on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 16:00.

The UAH-Space Weather Service (UAH-SWS) has been developed based on the scientific models published in international journals by researchers of the University of Alcala. It offers a warning of severe geomagnetic disturbances.

The warning from UAH-SWS consists in a δ function (true/false): 'true' when a ΔDst larger than 50 nT in an hour is expected, 'false' other ways. The warning code is based on the model by E. Saiz, C. Cid and Y. Cerrato (2008). There is only one input for the warning code: interplanetary magnetic field z-GSM component, which is downloaded automatically via ftp from NOAA. Our server at www.spaceweather.es connects to the NOAA server every minute and then run the code again. The main success of the UAH-SWS is not only the accuracy in the alerting process, but also the science behind the code, which is a great improvement in the task of understanding the Sun-Earth connection: variations in Bz IMF are related to large geomagnetic disturbances (C. Cid, E. Saiz, and Y. Cerrato, 2008).

References

Saiz, E, Cid, C, Cerrato, Y, Forecasting intense geomagnetic activity using interplanetary magnetic field data, Ann. Geophys., 26, 3989-3998, 2008. (pdf)
Cid, C., E. Saiz, and Y. Cerrato (2008), Comment on Interplanetary conditions leading to superintense geomagnetic storms (Dst<-250 nT) during solar cycle 23 by E. Echer et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L21107, doi:10.1029/2008GL034731.