Yes / Solar flares are extremely energetic phenomena in our Solar System. Their impulsive,
often drastic radiative increases, in particular at short wavelengths, bring immediate
impacts that motivate solar physics and space weather research to understand solar
flares to the point of being able to forecast them. As data and algorithms improve
dramatically, questions must be asked concerning how well the forecasting performs;
crucially, we must ask how to rigorously measure performance in order to critically
gauge any improvements. Building upon earlier-developed methodology (Barnes et al.
2016, Paper I), international representatives of regional warning centers and research
facilities assembled in 2017 at the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research,
Nagoya University, Japan to – for the first time – directly compare the performance
of operational solar flare forecasting methods. Multiple quantitative evaluation metrics
are employed, with focus and discussion on evaluation methodologies given the restrictions of operational forecasting. Numerous methods performed consistently above the
“no skill” level, although which method scored top marks is decisively a function of
flare event definition and the metric used; there was no single winner. Following in
this paper series we ask why the performances differ by examining implementation
details (Leka et al. 2019, Paper III), and then we present a novel analysis method to
evaluate temporal patterns of forecasting errors in (Park et al. 2019, Paper IV). With
these works, this team presents a well-defined and robust methodology for evaluating
solar flare forecasting methods in both research and operational frameworks, and today’s performance benchmarks against which improvements and new methods may be
compared.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/17193 |
| Date | 25 July 2019 |
| Creators | Leka, K.D., Park, S-H., Kusano, K., Andries, J., Barnes, G., Bingham, S., Bloomfield, D.S., McCloskey, A.E., Delouille, V., Falconer, D., Gallagher, P.T., Georgoulis, M.K., Kubo, Y., Lee, K., Lee, S., Lobzin, V., Mun, J., Murray, S.A., Nageem, T.A.M.H., Qahwaji, Rami S.R., Sharpe, M., Steenburgh, R., Steward, G., Terkilsden, M. |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, Accepted manuscript |
| Rights | © 2019 American Astronomical Association. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
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