Operational Testing of the CLEAR Space Weather Center of Excellence’s SEP Prediction Pipeline During the ARTEMIS-II Mission

Accurate real-time and forecast of the space radiation environment caused by solar energetic particles (SEPs) is essential in supporting the human and robotic exploration activities in space. We implemented an automated and end-to-end pipeline based on the Solar Wind With Field Lines and Energetic Particles (SOFIE) model developed at the University of Michigan.

 

SOFIE is a framework coupling several physics-based models that simulates the ambient solar wind, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and SEPs. The ambient solar wind and the propagation of the CME  is modeled using the Alfvén Wave Solar atmosphere Model–Realtime (AWSoM-R) model, a three-dimensional extended magnetohydrodynamic model that self-consistently accounts for Alfvén wave–driven heating and solar wind acceleration. The CME is generated by putting a Gibson–Low flux rope on the source region using the Eruptive Event Generator (EEGGL). The SEP acceleration and transport are modeled by the Multiple Field Line Particle Advection Model for Particle Acceleration (M-FLAMPA).

 

We have implemented the SOFIE pipeline in which the ambient solar wind will be running continuously, ingesting hourly updated photospheric magnetic field observations to maintain an up-to-date solar wind solution in the heliosphere. When a CME is detected, the pipeline will launch a branched integrated CME and SEP simulation, in which the arrival of the  Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejection (ICME) and the complete SEP profiles at the energies of interest to the operation will be forecasted within a few hours of simulation time. The SOFIE pipeline is now fully automatic without human intervention. Model outputs and forecast products, including real-time solar wind conditions in the heliosphere, the forecasted arrival of the ICME and the proton fluxes will be made publicly available through the CLEAR website (https://solarwind.engin.umich.edu/). We will test the readiness and robustness of the pipeline and evaluate its performance during the Artemis-II mission.