The NWRA Classification Infrastructure: Description and Extension to the Discriminant Analysis Flare Forecasting System (DAFFS)

TL;DR

This paper describes a classification infrastructure based on Discriminant Analysis for solar flare prediction, including its extension to probabilistic classification and its implementation in a real-time forecasting system, DAFFS.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible classification infrastructure for solar physics, extending Discriminant Analysis with Bayesian methods and operational real-time forecasting capabilities.

Findings

Successfully distinguished flare-imminent from flare-quiet regions

Updated results with larger datasets and improved accuracy

Demonstrated real-time operational flare forecasting system

Abstract

A classification infrastructure built upon Discriminant Analysis has been developed at NorthWest Research Associates for examining the statistical differences between samples of two known populations. Originating to examine the physical differences between flare-quiet and flare-imminent solar active regions, we describe herein some details of the infrastructure including: parametrization of large datasets, schemes for handling "null" and "bad" data in multi-parameter analysis, application of non-parametric multi-dimensional Discriminant Analysis, an extension through Bayes' theorem to probabilistic classification, and methods invoked for evaluating classifier success. The classifier infrastructure is applicable to a wide range of scientific questions in solar physics. We demonstrate its application to the question of distinguishing flare-imminent from flare-quiet solar active regions, updating results from the original publications that were based on different data and much smaller sample sizes. Finally, as a demonstration of "Research to Operations" efforts in the space-weather forecasting context, we present the Discriminant Analysis Flare Forecasting System (DAFFS), a near-real-time operationally-running solar flare forecasting tool that was developed from the research-directed infrastructure.