The service for Automated WARnings of Earth arrivals (AWARE) detects and displays arrival of solar wind disturbances with a potential to create geomagnetic storms. The arrivals are displayed on top of the near real-time solar wind time series observed by the currently near real-time operational spacecraft in L1, and kindly made available by NASA and NOAA. The top curve shows the interplanetary magnetic field, with the total intensity in black and the Bz-component in brown. The middle curve shows the solar wind speed v. These parameters are well known to be the most important for the geo-effectiveness of the storms.

Significant interplanetary shocks are displayed as red vertical lines. Time intervals of solar wind disturbance are marked with background shading. Disturbances due to solar eruptions, i.e. Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), classified as Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections (ICMEs) are marked with the orange color shown at the top of the display. Disturbances created at the front edge of high-speed streams as they interact with the surrounding solar wind, i.e. classified as Co-rotating Interaction Regions or just Stream Interaction Regions (CIRs/SIRs), are marked with the blue background shading. If such disturbances have arrived within the last 24 hours, the message “Alert: ICME arrived within the last 24 hours” or “Alert: CIR arrived within the last 24 hours” are shown above the display.

Disturbances where the classification is more uncertain are displayed in lighter orange and blue colors. If the disturbance cannot be automatically classified, it is displayed in grey. If such disturbances have arrived within the last 24 hours, the message “Alert: Disturbance has arrived within the last 24 hours” will appear.

In general the classification scheme is based on the plasma- and magnetic field observations in the disturbance. In the case of loss of plasma data, an alternative classification method has been developed, based only on magnetic field observation, the so-called B-only classification. Kp predictions are not made in this case.

Independently of the classification of disturbed intervals (background markings) each hour of solar wind observations are analyzed separately to determine the most likely solar origin of that material (Xu and Borovsky, 2015). If/when it is part of a possible CME-ejecta it is marked with a pink dot, and if it is part of high-speed stream material from a coronal hole it is marked with a light-blue dot.

The bottom curve shows a prediction of geomagnetic activity Kp based on the last 3 hours of solar wind observations. When the predicted Kp reaches storm levels (i.e. Kp≥5) it is displayed with a red marking.

An automatically updated list of arrived shocks and disturbances is available at: Data The file contains the events that have been detected by AWARE the last three days. (Format). If no events were detected the last 3 days the latest detection is displayed.

References

Vennerstrom and Leer (2014), Automated detection of solar wind disturbances, presented at ESWW-2014

Xu, F., and J. E. Borovsky (2015), A new four-plasma categorization scheme for the solar wind, J. Geophys. Res. Space Physics, 120, 70–100, doi:10.1002/2014JA020412

Acknowledgement