Why have space weather forecasts not improved for over a decade?

为什么太空天气预报十多年来没有改善？

• 批准号: NE/Y001052/1
• 负责人: Mathew Owens
• 金额: $ 50.41万
• 依托单位: University of Reading
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FY001052%2F1
• 关键词: Why; space; weather; forecasts; improved

The solar wind is a continual outflow of material from the Sun, which fills the solar system. Rapid changes in the solar wind conditions in near-Earth space have consequences for technologies in space and on the ground, most notably the power grid. It also poses a radiation threat to humans on high altitude flights and in space, such as future crewed missions to the moon and Mars. For these reasons, such "space weather" features prominently on the UK National Risk register; accurate space-weather forecasting a goal of critical importance.In order to mitigate against the costly, and sometimes dangerous, impacts of space weather, it is necessary to provide adequate warning time of an incoming event. As the solar wind always flows away from the Sun, forecasting further into the future effectively means starting the forecasts with information from closer to the Sun. Currently, the Met Office (and other international forecast agencies) uses remote observations of the Sun's surface and lower atmosphere in conjunction with computer models in order to forecast space weather 2-4 days into the future. Unfortunately, the accuracy with which these state-of-the-art methods can forecast the time of onset of the severe space weather is both insufficient to be useful for many applications, and has not improved for more than a decade. However, there are measurements of the solar wind being routinely made that are not currently being used by the models. Using methods developed at the University of Reading over the last 4-5 years, we have shown that solar wind forecasts can be significantly improved by ingesting these observations into the models using a technique called data assimilation (DA). We will employ our new solar wind DA methods to determine what factors most influence space-weather forecast accuracy and, consequently, what are the fundamental limits to how accurate forecasting can hope to reach. We will also adapt our solar wind DA methods to work with the Met Office's forecast models, providing a significant improvement in future space-weather forecasting. This will have wide societal benefits, as both satellite operation and the power grids can be impacted by space weather.

太阳风是从太阳填充太阳系的材料的连续流出。近地空间中太阳风条件的快速变化对空间和地面上的技术产生了影响，最著名的是电网。它还在高空飞行和太空中对人类构成了辐射威胁，例如未来的船员任务到月球和火星。由于这些原因，这种“太空天气”在英国国家风险登记册上突出了；准确的空间天气预测了至关重要的目标。为了减轻昂贵的，有时甚至是危险的太空天气影响，有必要提供进来的事件的足够警告时间。由于太阳风总是从阳光下流出，因此进一步预测了未来，这意味着从距离太阳近的信息开始预测。目前，大都会办公室（以及其他国际预测机构）与计算机模型一起使用了对太阳表面和较低气氛的远程观察，以预测未来2-4天的天气天气。不幸的是，这些最先进的方法可以预测，严重的空间天气的发作时间都不足以对许多应用有用，并且十年以上没有改善。但是，有一些常规制作的太阳风的测量值当前尚未被模型使用。使用过去4 - 5年在阅读大学开发的方法，我们已经表明，通过使用称为数据同化（DA）的技术将这些观察值摄入模型，可以通过将这些观察值摄入模型来显着改善。我们将采用新的太阳能风DA方法来确定哪些因素最大的因素影响了空间天气的预测准确性，因此，对于预测能够达到的准确预测的基本限制是什么？我们还将调整我们的太阳能风DA方法与大都会办公室的预测模型合作，从而在未来的空间天气预测方面有了重大改进。这将具有广泛的社会利益，因为卫星运行和电网都会受到太空天气的影响。