Prediction of Adverse effects of Geomagnetic storms and Energetic Radiation (PAGER) project

Space weather is a collective term used to describe hazardous events in the near-Earth space environment that can have an effect on humans and technology in space, causing damage to satellites, and can also have adverse effects on terrestrial power grids. Reliable predictions may help operators to put hardware into a safe mode, avoid maintenance or upgrades, issue alerts, and better understand the reasons for anomalies. The Prediction of Adverse effects of Geomagnetic storms and Energetic Radiation (PAGER) project provides space weather predictions that are initiated from observations of the Sun and predict the radiation environment in space. The project consists of the most advanced numerical and empirical codes from various institutions, including the adaptation of existing codes to perform ensemble simulations. The models include a combination of empirical and physics-based models, and data assimilation is used in the plasmasphere, ring current, and radiation belts. This project provides a new predictive system accounting for corotating interaction region (CIR) and coronal mass ejection (CME) driven storms, including estimates of confidence levels starting from remote solar observations all the way to the near-Earth solar wind conditions and the radiation environment. We also provide estimates of the levels of surface charging and deep dielectric charging for representative satellites and components. Probabilistic predictions allow us to advance the lead time for forecasts of the entire chain of processes up to predictions of several days ahead of the current time. The results of the PAGER project are available on the website: https://www.spacepager.eu/data-products.