Prediction of shock arrival times from CME and flare data

This page presents the Shock ARrival Model (SARM) for predicting arrival times of interplanetary shocks for distances from 0.72 AU to 8.7 AU by using coronal mass ejections (CME) and/or flare data. SARM is an aerodynamic drag model described by a differential equation that has been calibrated with a dataset of shocks observed from 1997 to 2016 by minimizing the mean absolute error (MAE), normalized to 1 AU. SARM may be used with CME data (radial, earthward or plane-of-sky speeds) and/or flare data (peak flux, duration, and location). The best results have been obtained using both CME data (either radial or cone-model-estimated speeds) and flare data.

The coefficients of the differential equation have been refined as more situations are analyzed and observed. The first set of cofficients was calibrated with historical data from 1997 to 2010 (Núñez et al, 2016). In the current version (v2.0), the coefficients were callibrated with data from 1997 to 2016, including all CME/flare data from 2010 to 2016 and their corresponding shock/no-shock observations at the Earth.

You may use the following online tools:

• Near real-time predictions of SARM v2.0 for the Earth are shown in http://spaceweather.uma.es/shock_predictions.html
• Execution of SARM v2.0 from NASA and NOAA historical data in http://spaceweather.uma.es/shock/predictions
• Execution of SARM v2.0 with manually provided input CME/flare data in http://spaceweather.uma.es/sarm_v2/index.html
• Execution of SARM v1.0 with manually provided input CME/flare data in http://spaceweather.uma.es/sarm/index.html

Reference: Núñez, M., T. Nieves-Chinchilla, and A. Pulkkinen (2016), Prediction of Shock Arrival Times from CME and Flare Data, Space Weather, 14, 2016, doi: 10.1002/2016SW001361.

  Contact:

  Prof. Dr. Marlon Núñez