Development of a System for Accurate Forecasting of Solar Activity.
Abstract
Eight years ago the AFOSR awarded us a grant to study the solar activity cycle both to understand its physical nature, and to forecast the timing and magnitude of future maxima with as much anticipation as possible. Because solar activity affects so many processes on Earth, from the reliability of solid state components on satellites, to electric power grids, to the orbital lifetime of low Earth orbit satellites, etc., such information is important to the DoD in general, and to the USAF in particular. The specific components of this study were three different tasks. The first consisted in developing an empirical forecasting scheme based on general but sound physical principles whose only objective was to provide the timing and magnitude of the following activity maximum both half a cycle and, hopefully, one and a half cycle in advance. The second task involved a realistic modeling of the magnetized flow in the solar convective envelope with the ultimate objective of producing a dynamo model sufficiently solid to allow detailed forecasting of the behavior of future cycles. The third task involved partial support for the development of the Solar Disk Sextant, a space-borne experiment which measures variations of the size and shape of the Sun with milli arc s accuracy. (AN)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 14, 1994
- Accession Number
- ADA295327
Entities
People
- Sabatino Sofia
Organizations
- Yale University