Ensemble Space Weather Forecasting with the SWMF

An accurate, physics-based model of the heliosphere that extends from the Sun to the Earth and beyond is the ``holy grail’’ of space weather forecasting. Global models that start in the corona (or below) are driven by representations of the full-Sun photospheric magnetic field. Traditionally, the full-Sun magnetic field has been provided by synoptic magnetograms, which are created over a 28 day period and are not an accurate representation of the magnetic field at any given time. Recently, several groups have been producing so-called ``synchronic maps,’’ which fuse magnetograms and models including differential rotation, meridional transport and diffusion to create time-dependent full-Sun magnetic field maps. Here, we include a variety of synchronic and synoptic maps to create an ensemble space weather model and report on the results.