Unifying the Validation of Ambient Solar Wind Models

TL;DR

This paper introduces an open online platform for validating ambient solar wind models, aiming to unify assessment methods and improve space weather forecasting accuracy through community collaboration.

Contribution

It develops a metadata architecture, proposes community-wide validation metrics, and provides a platform for unbiased, standardized evaluation of solar wind models.

Findings

Established an online validation platform for solar wind models.

Proposed standardized metrics and metadata architecture.

Enabled community-wide assessment and comparison of models.

Abstract

Progress in space weather research and awareness needs community-wide strategies and procedures to evaluate our modeling assets. Here we present the activities of the Ambient Solar Wind Validation Team embedded in the COSPAR ISWAT initiative. We aim to bridge the gap between model developers and end-users to provide the community with an assessment of the state-of-the-art in solar wind forecasting. To this end, we develop an open online platform for validating solar wind models by comparing their solutions with in situ spacecraft measurements. The online platform will allow the space weather community to test the quality of state-of-the-art solar wind models with unified metrics providing an unbiased assessment of progress over time. In this study, we propose a metadata architecture and recommend community-wide forecasting goals and validation metrics. We conclude with a status update of the online platform and outline future perspectives.