RUMS: Real-time Upstream Monitoring System

Latest data: EPAM (2 hours) (3 days) SIS (2 hours) (3 days) SWEPAM (2 hours) (3 days) MAG (2 hours) (3 days) (NOAA SEC)

Latest status (as of April 13 2007, 12:52:27 pm, EDT): No current shock activity has been detected. This page will auto-reload every five minutes to ensure that the latest information is displayed. RUMS event history: Last ten IP shocks All events detected since March 1998

Project Summary:
When Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) occur on the sun, they can produce shock waves that accelerate charged particles as they propagate outward from the sun through the interplanetary (IP) medium. As such IP shocks approach Earth, they can increase energetic ion intensities by several orders of magnitude. These ion intensity increases, known as Energetic Storm Particle (ESP) events, can present a potential radiation hazard for electronic components and for humans in Earth orbit. Moreover, since these ions generally begin arriving at Earth several hours prior to the shock passage, they also serve to warn us of an impending IP shock arrival. The RUMS system uses energetic ion data acquired real-time by NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft to predict, at five-minute intervals, the arrival of IP shocks based on the evolution of the ion intensity-time profiles in several energy ranges.

The RUMS system makes use of real-time data supplied by NOAA's Space Environment Center. This data is composed of five ion flux channels on the ACE Electron, Proton, and Alpha Monitor (EPAM) instrument. The particles detected by these channels have energies ranging from about 47 to 1900 keV (more info). The onset of an ESP event is detected by watching for characteristic velocity dispersion signatures in the particle data. When an onset is detected (usually two to three days before the peak intensity of the event occurs), the system shifts into prediction mode. Every five minutes, it generates a prediction for the time remaining until the peak occurs.

Interpreting Predictions:
Because our methods operate on data collected at first Lagrange point (L1, about 1% of the distance from the Earth to the Sun), the realtime detection of shock onset and arrival automatically provides a ~45 minute advance warning of possible events at Earth. The predicted shock arrival time is also calibrated to predict events at L1, so predictions of shock arrival at Earth should add approximately 45 minutes. In the future, we will augment our predictions using observations of the plasma velocity to more precisely predict when the shock will reach the Earth.

For More Information:
An initial version of the RISP system and experimental results were presented at the 34th COSPAR Scientific Assembly in 2002. The accompanying paper has been accepted for publication:

• Forecasting Space Weather: Predicting Energetic Storm Particle Events Using Neural Networks. J Vandegriff, K Wagstaff, G Ho, and J Plauger. Advances in Space Research, in press.