Medium Range Thermosphere-Ionosphere Storm Forecasts

The development of quantitative models that describe physical processes from the solar corona to the Earth’s upper atmosphere creates the possibility of numerical space weather forecasting with a lead time of a few days [Merkin et al., 2007; Toth et al., 2007]. Developing such a capability for the thermosphere and ionosphere is the objective of an effort described here sponsored by the NASA/National Science Foundation (NSF) Partnership for Collaborative Space Weather Modeling [Schunk, 2014]. Despite significant scientific progress in Sun-to-Earth modeling over the last few years, there is currently no system in place that relies on the physics-based model development of the past 10 years, to forecast moderate to intense upper atmosphere storms caused by solar wind disturbances. Mannucci [2012] suggests that a physics-based approach to forecasting upper atmospheric space weather has scientific as well as practical benefits.