A Survey of Space Weather Forecasters on Improvements Considered Priorities

Abstract:

There are few communication pipelines that link space weather forecasters with the research community; most are informal word-of-mouth communications or travel through several parties to reach researchers with the resources to act on it. This makes overcoming the “valleys of death and lost opportunities” even more challenging. To start filling this communication gap, we conducted a formal survey of the forecasters at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. The survey, using electronic surveys and focus groups, asked forecasters how they utilize the resources currently available to them and what improvements, in research and instrumentation, they considered the most useful in constructing more accurate and robust forecasts. In this talk, we present the list of improvements the forecasters identified as priorities.