Team title: Decadal-scale Solar Activity Prediction Challenge
Team ID: S1-05
Team Leads:
Claudio Corti (NASA/NSF Community Coordinated Modeling Center -CCMC, USA), corti AT hawaii.edu l
Dibyendu Nandi CESSI/IISER Kolkata, INDIA dnandi AT iiserkol.ac.in
Keywords (impact): Human exploration
Keywords (activity type): Forecasting , Assessment
Introduction:
From the S1 cluster review for COSPAR space weather roadmap:
The genesis of space weather and space climate has its roots anchored in the Sun’s convection zone, where the emergence, evolution, and dynamics of solar magnetic fields eventually govern the electromagnetic environment throughout the heliosphere. Therefore, accurately predicting and assessing our space environment is closely linked to comprehending the physics of the solar magnetic activity across different timescales. As evident in the long-term observation of the Sun over the past few centuries, the most prominent and regular variation in solar activity is the 11-year sunspot cycle, typically referred to as the solar cycle. The task of predicting and forecasting the solar cycle is a major challenge in the field of heliophysics. Significant progress has been achieved in the last decade in developing such predictive capabilities. However, there is significant divergence in forecasts using multiple different methodologies, such as statistical correlations based on precursors of solar activity, time-series analysis of solar cycle observations, machine learning techniques, solar surface flux transport (SFT) models, solar dynamo models, etc.
Objectives:
The goal of this team is to assess the current status of solar cycle predictions, by forecasting current solar cycle using data from previous cycle and then developing a solar cycle scoreboard (similar to other scoreboards available at CCMC) to visualize and compare predictions with data.
This effort will be followed by an actual validation with relevant metrics.
Predictions will not be limited to sunspot number, but also to open magnetic flux, F10.7, galactic cosmic rays, and other space climate indices.
Action topics:
- Assessment of predictive models of solar activity
Clusters with overlapping topics:
S2: Ambient solar magnetic field, heating and spectral irradiance, H1: Heliospheric magnetic field and solar wind, H3: Radiation Environment in Heliosphere, H4: Solar System and beyond, G1: Geomagnetic environment, G3: Near-end radiation and plasma environment