SWERTO: a Regional Space Weather Service

Abstract

The Space WEeatherR TOr vergata university (SWERTO) service is an operational Space Weather service based on multi-instrument data from space-based (PAMELA, ALTEA) and ground-based (IBIS, MOTHII) instruments. The service (spaceweather.roma2.infn.it) is located at the Physics Department of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy (UTOV) and will allow registered users to access scientific data from instrumentation available to UTOV researchers through national and international collaborations. It will provide intuitive software for the selection and visualization of such data and results from prototype forecasting codes for flare probability and Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) fluxes. The service is designed to promote access to technical and scientific information by the regional industries which employ technologies vulnerable to Space Weather effects. Basically, SWERTO aims to: i) design and construct a data-base with particle fluxes recorded by space missions and spectro-polarimetric measurements of the solar photosphere; ii) allow an Open Access to the data-base and to prototype forecasts to regional industries involved and exposed to Space Weather effects; iii) implement a tutorial and a FAQ section to help decision makers to became aware of and evaluate the risks from Space Weather events; iv) outreach and customer products. SWERTO has been financed by the Regione Lazio FILAS-RU-2014-1028 grant.

Parameter Distributions for the Drag-Based Modeling of CME Propagation

“…In those cases where no potential feature is retrieved by the query, the default source position is computed as the intersection between the CME POS angle vector and a circle centred on the disk centre, with radius R * , where R * = 1 3 R sun in case of a full halo CME, R * = 1 2 R sun in case of a half halo CME, R * = 2 3 R sun in case of a partial halo CME, R * = R sun in case the CME width is smaller than 90 • . To the CME foot-point position we associate an error given by the larger between 5" and the standard deviation of the weighted averaging described above.We employed this method and these weighting values since they are those in use in the real-time CME detection and propagation services SWERTO (Berrilli et al, 2017) and IPS (Veettil et al, 2019) and have been set after an extensive test on a number of known CME-ICME counterparts.…”

“…The accurate prediction of the arrival and characteristics of ICMEs at Earth, and more recently elsewhere in the heliosphere, is a necessity to minimize the impact on the existing and future assets, and has always been a primary goal of the SWx forecasting (see e.g., Daglis, 2001;Schrijver & Siscoe, 2010;Berrilli et al, 2017;Iwai et al, 2019;Veettil et al, 2019). Note that in this work the terms CME and ICME refer to the plasma and magnetic field structure expelled from the Sun, without the shock that precedes it.…”

Current state and perspectives of Space Weather science in Italy

“…2.3.2) and ground-based (IBIS, MOTHII; see Sect. 2.2) instruments were selected within the "Space WEeatherR TOr vergata university" (SWERTO) database Berrilli et al, 2018). Simulation-based investigations of the evolution of different Space Weather parameters are possible through the efficient use of the SWERTO data.…”

“…2.3.2) and ground-based (IBIS, MOTHII; see Sect. 2.2) instruments (Berrilli et al, 2018), which are relevant to the determination of Space Weather conditions. This project allowed registered users to access scientific data from instrumentation available to UNITOV researchers through national and international collaborations.…”

The Tor Vergata Synoptic Solar Telescope (TSST): A robotic, compact facility for solar full disk imaging

“…The University of Rome Tor Vergata is currently running a nowcasting and forecasting service, SWERTO (Berrilli et al, 2018(Berrilli et al, , 2019a, developed for Space Weather awareness and risk control at regional level in Italy. At present, it uses GONG Hα images and SDO/HMI magnetograms among the many input data.…”