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Key Points Large dB / dt “spikes” in ground magnetometer data occur in three local time hotspots in the pre‐midnight, dawn, and pre‐noon sectors These are consistent with spikes produced by substorm onsets, omega bands, and the Kelvin‐Helmholtz instability, respectively Spike occurrence is controlled by solar activity, maximizing in the declining phase of the solar cycle, esp. solar cycle 23
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Probabilistic Forecasting of Ground Magnetic Perturbation Spikes at Mid‐Latitude Stations
Abstract The prediction of large fluctuations in the ground magnetic field (dB/dt) is essential for preventing damage from Geomagnetically Induced Currents. Directly forecasting these fluctuations has proven difficult, but accurately determining the risk of extreme events can allow for the worst of the damage to be prevented. Here we trained Convolutional Neural Network models for eight mid‐latitude magnetometers to predict the probability thatdB/dtwill exceed the 99th percentile threshold 30–60 min in the future. Two model frameworks were compared, a model trained using solar wind data from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) satellite, and another model trained on both ACE and SuperMAG ground magnetometer data. The models were compared to examine if the addition of current ground magnetometer data significantly improved the forecasts ofdB/dtin the future prediction window. A bootstrapping method was employed using a random split of the training and validation data to provide a measure of uncertainty in model predictions. The models were evaluated on the ground truth data during eight geomagnetic storms and a suite of evaluation metrics are presented. The models were also compared to a persistence model to ensure that the model using both datasets did not over‐rely ondB/dtvalues in making its predictions. Overall, we find that the models using both the solar wind and ground magnetometer data had better metric scores than the solar wind only and persistence models, and was able to capture more spatially localized variations in thedB/dtthreshold crossings.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1920965
- PAR ID:
- 10419815
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Space Weather
- Volume:
- 21
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 1542-7390
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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