|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Space Environment Technologies is proud to announce the next generation of their forecast products. SET has been actively developing forecast products that maintain much of the same content and formats of it's current nowcast products (e.g., E10.7, F10.7, thermospheric temperatures, etc.), but will extend improved forecasts ( up to 128 days, but with particular emphasis on the 1-3 day and 28-day time-frames) with the lowest uncertainties available! These forecasts, issued every three hours, have been compared to the official NOAA Space Environment Center's forecasts and validated using one hundred satellite orbits. Additionally, further improvements to these new forecast products are already in final development, are scheduled for completion by Jan. 2003, and will significantly reduce uncertainties even further. These advanced prediction algorithms are based on the physical properties of solar irradiance variations and state-of-the-art signal processing
The figure below shows a comparison between the official NOAA/SEC forecasts to the SET/SpaceWx forecasts for the first 200 days of 2001: near the maximum of the solar cycle when predictions are the most difficult. The figure shows comparisons between the 1, 2, an 3-day values of the NOAA/SEC F10.7 forecasts (red) to SET/SpaceWx F10.7 forecasts (blue); it can be seen the SET/SpaceWx forecasts either meet, or slightly improve, the SEC F10.7 forecasts. Furthermore, the E10.7 forecasts (in units of F10.7) show a more dramatic improvement.
A sample of one of the forecast products - shown below - provides the issued E10.7 and F10.7 values for the past 160 days, and their predicted values out to 128 days in the future. Error bars indicate 1-3 standard deviations. Recall that E10.7, in units of F10.7, is a proxy EUV index that can be used to improve models and algorithms simply by replacing F10.7 values: no other changes are required. Additionally, the entire irradiance spectrum (at one nm resolution), related sunspot proxies, and thermospheric parameters, are forecasted and are available for customers.
The significant improvements F10.7 and E10.7 forecasts offer, the fact the the SET/SpaceWx forecasts are automatically updated every three hours (compared to the daily manual predictions at NOAA/SEC), and the greater accuracy of E10.7 over F10.7 in estimating the terrestrially-important EUV radiation, means key values important to satellite operations and radio propagation can be used in operations to reduce costs and lower risks. These forecast products, the regular upgrades to the SOLAR2000 irradiance specification tool, and the expanding offerings of SET/SpaceWx products are testimony to SET's commitment to providing the most advanced and reliable line of space weather products for applications that range from research to mission-critical operations.
In addition to the dramatically improved forecasts, SET/SpaceWx now offers indices in units that are commonly used in numerous space-physics models and applications requiring thermospheric density.
The release of this version of the model provides additional, new proxies that can be used by several communities including the thermospheric heating rate, Qeuv (ergs cm-2 s-1), the derived sunspot number, Rsn (unitless), the exospheric temperature at 450 km, Tinf (K), and the EUV hemispheric power, Peuv (GW).
In the figures that follow, thermospheric temperatures and profiles are shown for the MSIS and 1DTD using the legacy values of F10.7 vs. the new E10.7 values.
