Assessment

Moderator:

Masha Kuznetsova (NASA/GSFC CCMC,) maria.m.kuznetsova@nasa.gov. 

Co-Moderator:

Alexi Glover (ESA/ESOC, Germany), alexi.glover@esa.int

Within the space weather community, prototype services frequently operate as capability demonstrators and a full verification of their ability to reproduce/predict elements of the space environment under a range of space weather conditions, from the moderate to the extreme, has yet to be completed. In addition, as new modelling capabilities emerge, information on the operational use case for a given model can provide valuable information to the developer, facilitating transition from the research domain into operations at a later stage.

This overarching activity aims to build a community-wide consensus on how to address performance assessment, in the context of suitability for transition to operations, for the wide range of models involved in the space weather landscape. It encourages dialogue between modelers, application developers and service providers in order to review current model and service validation activities, to build upon successes, to identify challenges, and to develop a strategy for continuous assessment of space weather predictive capabilities as recommended in the COSPAR Space Weather Roadmap.

International Forum on Space Weather Capabilities Assessment

This international community-wide forum  brings together space environment experts, model and application developers, data providers, forecasters and experts in space environment impacts to

  • define metrics to assess the current state of space weather modeling capabilities from the perspective end-users and science for space weather
  • evaluate the current state of space environment specification and forecasting capabilities;
  • facilitate communications, understanding and partnerships between forecasters and researchers;
  • address challenges in data-model comparison, including data quality and availability, uncertainties and sensitivities to external drivers, internal parameters and assumptions;
  • identify a path for evaluation and accelerated incorporation of scientific ideas with potential to improve forecasting into space weather applications;
  • quantify and track progress over time and communicate it to end-users and the community;
  • facilitate improvement of space weather predictive capabilities.

The progress of Forum working teams is highlighted in the AGU Space Weather Journal Special Issue on Space Weather Capabilities Assessment. Active Forum teams are anticipated to register into ISWAT.

International CCMC-LWS Working Meeting: Assessing Space Weather Understanding and Applications, Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, April 3-7, 2017