Solar wind forecast

PREDSTORM is our real-time solar wind forecast for the Sun-Earth L1 point. It is updated every 10 minutes, and is based on a recurrence model using the NOAA real time solar wind, provided by the DSCOVR or ACE spacecraft. Caution: This forecast only works for high-speed solar wind streams, and will fail during times when solar storms, also known as coronal mass ejections, impact the Earth's magnetic field. GFZ Potsdam (Germany) has added Hp30/Hp60/Kp indices to this prediction here - see panel "Helio4Cast solar wind forecast" on their webpage.

The first two plots show the same data and forecast, the third plot shows the NOAA data along with STEREO-A beacon data. STEREO-A was positioned close to Earth in 2023 to 2024, at a distance of 0.05 AU closer to the Sun, and thus formed the first sub-L1 solar wind monitor. We use our own model, based on machine learning, to calculate the geomagnetic Dst index from the solar wind recurrence model forecasts.

Bailey et al. (2020) presented a study in which STEREO-A in situ data was used for an ambient solar wind forecast. This forms a baseline for techniques to be applied to data returned by the ESA Vigil mission, starting with the early 2030s when Vigil will be stationed at the Sun--Earth L5 point. PREDSTORM will then be able to include real-time data returned by Vigil for forecasting the ambient solar wind at Earth, driven by Vigil data.

The data shown in the plots are available in ASCII format in a 1 hour time resolution and 1 min time resolution.