Working Meeting - Community-wide space weather Scoreboards: Research assessment of real-time forecasting models and techniques.

M. Leila Mays (CUA/GSFC), Jesse Andries (ROB), Shaun Bloomfield (Northumbria University), Mark Dierckxsens (BIRA), Jordan Guerra (TCD), Mike Marsh (UK Met Office), Sophie Murray (TCD), Masha Kuznetsova (GSFC)
Thursday 17th, 15:00 - 16:30, Ridderzaal

Confidence assessment of predictive space weather models ultimately determines the value of forecasts for end users. Testing predictive capabilities before event onset is important and is especially relevant for validating techniques that predict occurrence, timing and strength of space weather events.

There are three ongoing real-time forecast validation projects led by the international space weather community and facilitated by the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) via forecast collection, display and dissemination Scoreboards:
(1) CME arrival time and geomagnetic storm strength;
(2) Flare occurrence probability, and;
(3) SEP onset, duration, peak flux, probability, and overall profile.

The CME, Flare, and SEP Scoreboards enable world-wide community involvement in real-time predictions, with the goal of fostering community validation projects that ultimately help researchers improve their CME, flare, and SEP forecasts. All CME, Flare, SEP forecast modelers and experts worldwide are invited to advise or participate in this community-wide effort.

The Scoreboards allow a consistent real-time comparison of various operational and research forecasts. The flare and SEP system is automated such that model developers can routinely upload their predictions to an anonymous ftp. The forecast data is parsed and stored in a database accessible to anyone via an API.

The purpose of this working meeting is to introduce the Scoreboards and solicit feedback from modelers/forecasters/users on:
Plans for validation studies including choosing a set of skill scores and other assessment techniques; ideas on improving CME and Flare Scoreboards information ingestion, display, and dissemination; feedback on the recently initiated SEP Scoreboard submission file content and planning the SEP display; ideas for new Scoreboards.

We will also discuss opportunities for community-wide ensemble modeling and plans for developing and testing ensemble techniques enabled by the Scoreboard project.

(Links: https://kauai.ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/CMEscoreboard/
http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/challenges/flare.php
http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/challenges/sep.php)