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Location data for space weather


FbH

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Reading the NOAA space weather forecast text files, there does not appear to be any information to locate wx phenomena in 3D space.  For space weather that has a global impact, I can appreciate that it may be pointless to try to identify locations in an meaningful way.

However, are there any space weather events and respective forecasts that do contain location related information? 

My team is trying to build a model for space that is similar to predicting both when and where an aircraft will encounter a terrestrial weather event given the aircraft's flight path and the location of the weather.  While we appreciate the environments are very different, we are wondering whether it is possible to do the same modeling for any space objects and space weather events.

Thanks for any pointers,

Forrest

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Marcel,

Thank you for the response.  I believe that model is what NOAA and NASA use to predict when a storm will arrive in the earth's atmosphere.  That is what generates the forecasts to which I was referring in my original post.  However, those forecasts only provide the expected time and duration of an occurrence.  However, are there any space weather events and respective forecasts that do contain location related information as it pertains to the earth's atmosphere?  I'm sorry that I was not sufficiently specific about that last part.  In order to predict when a specific object will be impacted by the event, it would be helpful to know where the event will be.

Thanks again,

Forrest

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Space weather is a global phenomenon that impacts our entire planet in some cases but mainly areas around the poles. Different space weather events affect our planet in different ways. Sometimes there can be very local more extreme disturbances of the magnetic field during a geomagnetic storm which we can use magnetometers for that are stationed around the world. However, accurately estimating and modeling these kind of local disturbances is not possible as far as I know. You can use the OVATION model which gives a rough estimate of the strength of the auroral oval 30 minutes in the future but its just that. An estimate.

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Unfortunately, our predictions of the arrival of Solar-generated events are limited by technology and current knowledge. To know when and where, exactly, the event will affect Earth, may require additional satellite observatories. To reliably forecast weather for any practical purposes requires a substantial investment in instruments which can observe the events which we're forecasting. Additionally, the Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere play a significant role in this forecasting, yet both of those are not completely understood yet and cannot be looked at for meaningful data as to how the Earth will interact with an incoming event. And so, we resort to the observation and analysis of patterns, and hence we have no exacts in our forecasts.

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