NATIONAL OBSERVATORY OF ATHENS

The FORSPEF system highlighted by the European Space Agency’s Space Environment Section

The FORSPEF (FORecasting Solar Particle Events and Flares) prototype system is presented by the Space Environment Section of ESA/ETEC. The FORSPEF system was developed and is operated by The Space Research and Technology Group of IAASARS in the framework of the ESA Contract No. 4000109641/13/NL/AK “Improvement of Solar Particle Events and Flare Prediction”. The FORSPEF system provides forecasting of solar eruptive events, such as solar flares with a projection to coronal mass ejections (CMEs) (occurrence and velocity) and the likelihood of occurrence of a solar energetic proton (SEP) event. The system also provides nowcasting of SEP events based on actual solar flare and CME near real-time alerts, as well as SEP characteristics (peak flux, fluence, rise time, duration) per parent solar event. The forecasting scheme extends to 24 hours with a refresh rate of 3 hours while the respective warning time for the nowcasting scheme depends on the availability of the near real-time data and falls between 15-20 minutes. More details can be found here.