Post-processing Probabilistic Forecasts of the Solar Wind by Data Mining Similar Scenarios

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: da Silva, Daniel E., Parlikar, Yash, Jones, Shaela I., Arge, Charles N.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author da Silva, Daniel E.
Parlikar, Yash
Jones, Shaela I.
Arge, Charles N.
author_facet da Silva, Daniel E.
Parlikar, Yash
Jones, Shaela I.
Arge, Charles N.
contents The solar wind speed at Earth is one of the most important parameters regarding the effects of space weather on society. Thus far, most approaches for predicting the solar wind speed produce a single-value time series without uncertainty, or utilize ensemble methods which require custom calibration development. In this study, a method is developed that produces calibrated probabilistic forecasts of the solar wind speed using skew normal distributions and a novel extension of analog ensembles. In our extension, the single-value predictions from a baseline model of the next $Δt$ days are used along with $Δwindow$ hours of recent observations and single-value predictions to create a forecasting scenario vector that is compared against a historical database for outcomes. The baseline model used is the combined Air Force Data Assimilative Photospheric Flux Transport-Wang Sheeley Arge (ADAPT-WSA) model and the WSA point parcel simulation, but the method is directly applicable to other deterministic models including components such as Enlil or the Heliospheric Upwind Extrapolation with time dependence model (HUXt). The approach works notably well on the benchmark of whether observations fall within the $p^{th}$ percentile $p\%$ of the time (for $p$ between 0 and 100). Falling back on the mean or median of the predicted distribution as a non-probabilistic prediction yields a direct improvement in root-mean-square error (RMSE) over the original WSA point parcel simulation, and is shown to beat $\approx$ 1 solar rotation recurrence for 1-5 day ahead forecasts.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_11284
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Post-processing Probabilistic Forecasts of the Solar Wind by Data Mining Similar Scenarios
da Silva, Daniel E.
Parlikar, Yash
Jones, Shaela I.
Arge, Charles N.
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Space Physics
The solar wind speed at Earth is one of the most important parameters regarding the effects of space weather on society. Thus far, most approaches for predicting the solar wind speed produce a single-value time series without uncertainty, or utilize ensemble methods which require custom calibration development. In this study, a method is developed that produces calibrated probabilistic forecasts of the solar wind speed using skew normal distributions and a novel extension of analog ensembles. In our extension, the single-value predictions from a baseline model of the next $Δt$ days are used along with $Δwindow$ hours of recent observations and single-value predictions to create a forecasting scenario vector that is compared against a historical database for outcomes. The baseline model used is the combined Air Force Data Assimilative Photospheric Flux Transport-Wang Sheeley Arge (ADAPT-WSA) model and the WSA point parcel simulation, but the method is directly applicable to other deterministic models including components such as Enlil or the Heliospheric Upwind Extrapolation with time dependence model (HUXt). The approach works notably well on the benchmark of whether observations fall within the $p^{th}$ percentile $p\%$ of the time (for $p$ between 0 and 100). Falling back on the mean or median of the predicted distribution as a non-probabilistic prediction yields a direct improvement in root-mean-square error (RMSE) over the original WSA point parcel simulation, and is shown to beat $\approx$ 1 solar rotation recurrence for 1-5 day ahead forecasts.
title Post-processing Probabilistic Forecasts of the Solar Wind by Data Mining Similar Scenarios
topic Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Space Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.11284