Several important data sets are currently collected via different methods, ranging from remote to in-situ spacecraft and ground observations. These are made available for space weather purposes through various channels. The most commonly used data sets will be described, including their advantages and drawbacks. There exists a misalignment between the currently provided data sets and the requirements requested by forecasters and other users of space weather data. Inaccuracies, errors and delays in space weather forecasting could often be reduced with better data-set management, especially in terms of latency, accessibility and multi-point measurements. An 'ideal' collection of space weather data sets will be discussed.

We will present both scientific and space weather objectives, and the related measurements needs, of potential future missions to the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points. We will present past and current concept, which vary largely by objective from primarily science-driven to purely space weather-driven. An intermediate concept, which we shall call INSTANT (INvestigations of Solar Transient Associated Natural Threats), will be discussed.

PROBA2 is a European Space Agency space weather mission, comprised of two Sun monitoring instruments, "The Sun Watcher using APS and Image Processing" (SWAP, an EUV imager) and the "Large Yield Radiometer" (LYRA), a solar UV radiometer. PROBA2 is used for both science and space weather forecasting, and has provided a continual data set since late 2009.

In this talk we will discuss the data-sets provided by PROBA2, the operational constraints and difficulties of the mission as well as the advantages and flexibility of being a small mission. In particular we will look at PROBA2's unique pipeline for data delivery and some of the challenges and opportunities PROBA2 presents as a result of the spacecraft orbit and processing requirements. We will also discuss the variable conditions to which the spacecraft is exposed in orbit and our efforts to track and correct for degradation of the instruments throughout the course of the mission.

The experiment Dual Segmented Langmuir Probe (DSLP) on board Proba-2 spacecraft (ESA) provides a long-term continual survey of basic plasma properties measured in situ in the dawn and dusk sectors of the upper terrestrial ionosphere. DSLP observations are acquired by two identical segmented spherical Langmuir probes representing a novel approach to a well developed plasma diagnostic technique. Starting its nominal operations in May 2010, more than 3 years of regular observations are currently being available providing a substantial data set for monitoring observed ionospheric disturbances and irregularities e.g. in view of potential space weather drivers. We show some of the DSLP data scientific applications like seasonal or immediate variations of derived plasma properties in comparison with possible effects of sudden solar events or overall solar activity. In order to facilitate the scientific analysis of the large DSLP data set, all raw measurements are routinely being processed into calibrated higher level data products and made available throughout an online accessible data archive derived from the PDS and CDF standards. Here we present the complete structure of the archive with individual data products, and show available tools to access, handle and analyse individual DSLP samples.

Full Sun observations from ground or space provide important information on the background of the Sun when important events occur. Simultaneous and complementary data are necessary to have both time continuity and spatial information. BASS2000 Meudon provides context information from several instruments: Meudon and Coimbra spectroheliographs, Brussels USET refractor, Pic du Midi coronograph and Nançay solar radio observations. Some of these data are used to populate the Heliophysics Feature Catalogue (HFC) developed in the frame of the European project HELIO. HFC provide around one solar cycle of descriptions for filament, prominences, coronal and photospheric active regions, sunspots, coronal holes, radio sources at metric wavelength and radio type III bursts. The time tracking of the behavior of solar features requires continuity in observations and the best time resolution possible. Space probes are submitted to lifetime constraints while ground-based observations have to deal with many defaults (clouds, sky transparency, parasites, ...) that have to be taken into account before being able to extract added-values from them.
We'll describe here what has been done, and the needs for standardization of data description in order to develop generic tools compliant with Virtual Observatory.

The upper solar atmosphere (chromosphere and corona), emitting mainly in the ultraviolet, plays a crucial role as a source of space weather events. It is continuously observed by imagers and spectro-imagers such as those from SoHO, STEREO, and SDO, and their data is of interest for the space weather community. The MEDOC centre at IAS includes such large data sets, and provides added-value products such as differential emission measure maps and tools such as the FESTIVAL multi-instrument visualization software. Images allow us for instance to detect filaments / prominences automatically, potentially giving an early warning for an eruption.
We will present the data sets presently available as well as the ones that future space missions will provide. We will describe the issues related to extremely large data sets. We will finally show some example of analysis of these data sets.

We review the availability and use of ground-based H-alpha observations for the study of the solar sources of space weather. High-cadence full-disk imaging in the H-alpha spectral line provides us with a valuable means to identify erupting filaments - potentially associated with Earth-directed coronal mass ejections - and the onset and peak of intense solar flares in quasi real-time. We present first results of the automatic detection of solar flares and erupting filaments implemented at the Kanzelhoehe Observatory H-alpha observing system in the frame of ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Program. Specific problems related to the ground-based H-alpha observations and potential solutions will be discussed.

Since all space weather originates in and on the Sun, forecasters need continuous, long-term, consistent, and reliable solar data as a foundation for useful predictions. It has long been recognized that an effective strategy to obtain nearly continuous solar data is to set up a ground-based network of identical observing instruments geographically distributed so that gaps from night time, weather and instrumental problems are reduced. While space platforms can provide nearly-continual solar observations that are also free of terrestrial atmospheric limitations, networks have five distinct advantages: the costs of developing and maintaining a network are roughly a factor of 10 to 15 lower; the network instrumentation can be upgraded, and repaired when it fails; the network lifetime is in principle unlimited; there are less stringent telemetry restrictions than for satellite-borne platforms; and networks are not very vulnerable to space weather events. In addition, there are a number of new scientific research directions in solar physics that motivate the desire for a new ground-based network, particularly one that is capable of multi-wavelength measurements that provide data at different heights in the solar atmosphere. Such observations would provide information on wave propagation and the vector magnetic field as a function of height in the solar atmosphere. In turn, these data would provide greatly improved inferences of the structure and dynamics below active regions via helioseismology, as well as more accurate extrapolations of the magnetic field in the corona. This presentation will outline the scientific and operational requirements, and describe some instrumental concepts for a new network.

Systematic observations of the photospheric magnetic field provide guidance and challenges for understanding the solar cycle and space weather, by allowing study of solar surface magnetic features and their behavior over days, weeks, and solar cycles. Routine continuous observations of the line-of-sight component have proven crucial for advances in many topics of solar and space-weather research, and are now being routinely used in real-time forecasting of space-weather events. Observations of the full vector of the photospheric field have historically been more sparse; they are more difficult. Yet from even the earliest routine observations of the photospheric vector field came crucial insights into the magnetic morphology and energy storage of the active regions responsible for space weather events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Vector solar magnetic field data -- specifically when routine, sufficiently-well sampled (temporally, spatially, spectrally) and uninterrupted over a sufficiently long time period, such as are now beginning to be available -- allow for investigations (a) statistical in nature, which can (b) avoid some of the very limiting assumptions required when using solely the line-of-sight magnetic component, i.e. (c) having those two additional components of information to provide the full physical magnetic vector at the surface, provides information on the plasma physics, available energy, and dynamic behavior of solar phenomena simply not available otherwise. I highlight future promises (based on current research) that are available from routine, continuous (synoptic) photospheric vector magnetic field observations, especially in the context of space-weather-related research and improvements to operations for topics such as early detection of emerging active regions, forecasting solar flares, and improvements to global-field models.

Extreme space-weather events are natural phenomena caused by solar activity that can have a serious impact on modern technological infrastructures. Monitoring near real time the solar activity is crucial to predict the arrival time of such events on Earth.
The e-Callisto network, initiated through IHY2007 and ISWI, is a worldwide-distributed set of radio spectrometers designed to monitor solar radio emission in the metre and decametre bands. Here we describe the network characteristics and we present the important contribution of the e-Callisto network as a 24-hour monitor of the solar eruptive activity.

Radio emission of the active Sun at decimetre to decametre wavelengths (frequencies below 1 GHz) reveals electron beams, shock waves and confined energetic electron populations during flares and coronal mass ejections. The information gained is relevant to astrophysical research on solar eruptive activity, particle acceleration and propagation, as well as to space weather issues such as early signatures of coronal mass ejections and particle acceleration that may affect the Earth.

The Nançay radio observatory has a worldwide unique set of complementary instruments that monitor the Sun : imaging with the Radioheliograph (150-450 MHz) and spectrography with the Decameter Array (10-80 MHz) have been carried out since several years. Since September 2012 a new spectrograph (140-1000 MHz) is being operated. Furthermore a new low-frequency receiver has been installed at the Decameter Array, opening the window between 30 and 10 MHz, which is heavily contaminated by terrestrial emitters. This set of instruments presents a coverage of eruptive activity in the low and middle corona (up to about a solar radius above the photosphere) which goes as far down in frequency as possible from ground, and is complemented by space borne spectrographic observations on the Wind and STEREO missions, which will continue with Solar Orbiter in the future. This contribution will present the instruments and data sets provided, and illustrate their diagnostic capabilities with recent observations.

Dimmings and EUV waves have been observed routinely in EUV images since 1996. They are closely associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and therefore provide useful information for early space weather alerts. On the one hand, automatic detection and characterization of dimmings and EUV waves can be used to gain better understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms. On the other hand, every dimming and EUV wave provides extra information on the associated front side CME, yielding improved estimates of the geo-effectiveness and arrival time of the CME.

Solar Demon has been designed to detect and characterize dimmings, EUV waves, as well as solar flares in near real-time on Solar Dynamics Observatory/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (SDO/AIA) data. It is running continuously at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, and is the result of collaboration between the FP7 projects COMESEP and AFFECTS. We present an overview of the system, show several interesting events, and present general statistics of the detections made during solar cycle 24.

SEPServer is a three-year collaborative project funded by the seventh framework programme (FP7-SPACE) of the European Union. The objective of the project is to provide, among other things, access to state-of-the-art observations and analysis tools for the scientific community on solar energetic particle (SEP) events. The study of SEPs at different latitudes and under different conditions provides useful information about energetic particle propagation and acceleration, and is one of the focus areas of the project. The Ulysses mission, launched in 1990, explored the three dimensional heliosphere during different solar activity conditions until the spacecraft was finally switched off on June 30, 2009. The mission has been the only one that allowed us to study the characteristics of SEPs at low and high latitudes. In this work,
the Cosmic Ray and Solar Particle Investigation (COSPIN) Kiel Electron Telescope (KET) data of 38 to 125 MeV has been used to identify a number of 40 events SEPs observed in and out of the ecliptic plane over solar cycle 23. Using electron observations from the Heliosphere Instrument for Spectra, Composition and Anisotropy at Low Energies (HISCALE) and proton intensities from the COSPIN Low-Energy Telescope (LET), different characteristics of these events have been determined and compared with simulation based analysis and remote sensing data from radio and optical observation. The event catalogue presented in this paper will be available to the community for further analysis through
http://server.sepserver.eu.

To quantify the space weather effects of the solar wind on the Earths magnetosphere and ionosphere in-situ measurements are indispensable. Satellites like the ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft at L1 are thus necessary to obtain real-time solar wind parameters. We use these data to generate L1 based near real-time warnings of severe space weather and its effects through RSS feeds.
As derivatives we provide Kp and aurorae feeds too. The services are freely available through the AFFECTS website and the feedback of current users testing them is extremely encouraging. The space weather services in use and their soon provision as solar wind mobile phone apps will help greatly increasing space weather awareness to the scientific community and general public.

With the advent of a new generation of dynamo models, the interest for long-term impacts of space weather and the current issues about climate change, the sunspot number (SSN) is now being used more than ever before as the multi-secular tracer of solar activity in a wide range of science studies.This has motivated new efforts to revisit, improve and expand this reference index of solar activity, which had been left largely untouched for many decades.

Here, we review the main advances achieved recently, both in the early historical part of this series but also in modern SSN values. We also compare the different sunspot-based indices and identify their usefulness and shortcomings relative to the international SSN. Based on all new corrections identified in the SSN series by a collective work, the publication of a new revised SSN series is now planned for 2014, bringing the first thorough revision of the sunspot number series since the time of Rudolph Wolf.

In parallel to this major update of the main data series, we also entirely updated and reworked the operational production of the SSN and its quality control. For our users, this transition will materialize in the form of a new web site, new data products as well as a new name for our World Data Center: SILSO, for "Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations". We describe the new features of this new central portal serving the sunspot number to our growing community of scientific and non-scientific users.

The STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) mission employs two nearly identical space-based observatories - one ahead of Earth in its orbit (STEREO-A: STA), the other trailing behind (STEREO-B: STB) aiming at providing the first-ever stereoscopic measurements of the Sun. The intensities of SEP events are strongly affected by the properties of the interplanetary magnetic
Field that control the acceleration and propagation of particles throughout the heliosphere. The study of SEP events provides useful information on the physics of solar particle genesis, propagation and acceleration. Therefore the usage of STEREO recordings provides an unprecedented opportunity to identify the evolution of such events at different observing points within the heliosphere. In this work, two instruments onboard STEREO have been used in order to identify all SEP events observed within the rising phase of solar cycle 24 from 2007 to 2012, namely: the Low Energy Telescope (LET) and the Solar Electron Proton Telescope (SEPT). A scan over STEREO/LET protons within the energy range 6-10 MeV has been performed for each of the two STEREO spacecraft (i.e. STA & STB). We have tracked all enhancements that have been observed above the background level of this particular channel and cross checked with available lists on STEREO/ICMEs, SIRs and shocks as well as with the reported events via literature. Furthermore, parallel scanning of the STEREO/SEPT electrons in order to pin point the presence (or not) of an electron event has been performed in the energy range of 55-85 keV, for all of the aforementioned proton events, included in our lists. Simulation based analysis has also been performed for two events of this catalog using the inversion methods that were developed within SEPServer.

An essential step in understanding space weather effects is being able to relate them back to their causal phenomena. Uncertainties in the relative timing of events in different parts of the Solar System are a result of the difficulties in measuring propagation velocities and being unable to accurately define the propagation path length. It is therefore essential that a large number of events are analysed so that general trends can be determined

As part of the HELIO project we have assembled comprehensive event and features catalogues of solar and heliospheric phenomena. The Heliophysics Event Catalogue (HEC) now contains more than 60 event lists covering all the domains that constitute heliophysics while the Heliophysics Feature Catalogue (HFC) has details of 7 different solar and heliospheric features. Both catalogues cover a time interval of more than 15 years; some events lists in the HEC go back many decades. Both catalogues can be accessed through user-friendly interfaces or from SolarSoft/IDL.

There are difficulties if defining what constitutes an event or feature. In both cases the detection algorithms used are based on criteria that represent an opinion of an individual or group. They do not represent an absolute description and care needs to be exercised when undertaking statistical studies based on this type of data. It is therefore beneficial to be able to compare and contrast lists that describe the same event or feature derived by different teams.

For both catalogues we have tried to find multiple ways of defining the items being reported. In the feature catalogue several techniques have been used to detect active regions and coronal holes - the results from all are included in the catalogue. In the event catalogue we have sought out lists from different sources identifying events and have multiple lists for flares, energetic particle events and coronal mass ejections.

It is clear from the event lists that we assembled that they need to be used collectively. Each individual list will include some of the occurrences of a particular type of phenomena but event major events can sometime be missed because of criteria used.

We discuss the implications of this and steps that need to be taken to make this type of capability even better.

The sun varies over different timescales, from minutes to month, decades and millennia. Its variation is an important driver to terrestrial climate changes and as such an important input to climate models. While several observation exists to date over a broad frequency range, they are sparse over both time and frequency.

As part of the SOLID (First European comprehensive SOlar Irradiance Data Exploitation) project we show first results of constructing a homogeneous solar spectral irradiance dataset of the UV.

We present the data used, together with preliminary error-estimates and self-consistent quality assessments, gap-filling methods and selection criteria. In a next step, we utilize a combination of observed solar spectral irradiance from several missions starting with OSO III in 1967 together with available proxy data, to further quantify the data quality.

The SOLID project is part of the seventh European framework programme. It aims to join a large variety of different solar spectral irradiance data sets and combine them into one dataset and to reconstruct the spectral solar variability further back in time. The overall goal is to deliver a dataset that can be used by e.g. climate researchers in order to account for the non-constant solar forcing.

Bucharest solar station is located on the first meridian of the ESA countries visited by the Sun.
The systematic solar observations began in Bucharest in 1956, with two refractors on a unique mounting: the lunette for photosphere - a Zeiss equatorial 130/1950 mm and the other one, 80/1200 mm, for chromosphere.
The 130/1950 mm refractor (Zeiss, 1957) has been used at daily, visual and photographic observations of the photosphere for: sunspot relative number; sunspot coordinates and evolution; sunspot area. The sunspot data monthly buletin were sent to Data Centers of Pulkovo (1957-1968), Zürich (1957-1982), Freiburg (1957-1968), and Bruxelles (1983-1997).
The 80/1200 mm refractor (Zeiss, 1958), equiped with a Halle Lyot-Ohmann filter (0.5 A pass-band), until 2004, has been used for chromospheric patrol observations, visual and photographic.
Distribution at data centers: Boulder Colorado, Meudon, Moscow (1958-1997), Pulkovo (1958-1997).
Past programs for both instrument: Solar patrol; International Geophysical Year (1957-1968), International Quiet Sun Years (IQSY, 1964-1965), Proton Flare Project (PFP, 1967), Rapid Variations of the Solar Magnetic Fields (KAPG, 1966-1974); INTERCOSMOS (1964-1977).
Publications: Solar Geophysical Data (USA), Quarterly Bulletin of Solar Activity (Japan), Solnechnye Dannye (Russia), Observations Solaires (Bucharest, Romanian Academy Publ.House, 1956-1997).
After 1997, the solar activity daily survey ceased, but observational campaigns were performed using a ST-7 CCD camera, 765 x 510 pixels (fov 0.7x0.5 from the solar disk), on the in Halpha instrument.
The solar dome was damaged and need need to be refurbished after 2002. A new Halpha filter, Solar Observer Filter S-1.5 (0.3+/- 0.05 A, were mounted after 2012.
Currently, new CCD cameras and the financing of the program are necessary, in order to perform full disk solar patrol of the chromosphere and photosphere, as a space weather service.