A team of solar scientists says it has improved on approaches that predict the eruption of solar flares, violent bursts of energy that can damage satellites, endanger astronauts in orbit and even threaten the power grid on the ground. Space agencies, airlines, satellite operators and power utilities would like to have access to better forecasts of all kinds of space weather-the charged particles and streams of radiation spewed out in irregular burps and blasts by the sun.
By tracking the twisting of magnetic fields in the sun's interior through helioseismology as well as the strength of the magnetic field at the surface, space weather forecasters should be able to predict solar flares two or three days in advance with unprecedented accuracy, the researchers claim. By one metric, their method roughly doubles the predictive skill of the forecast approaches surveyed in a December 2008 study.
