Auroras Now

1
Auroras Now!

• Kirsti Kauristie 1), Anssi Mälkki 1), Anneli
  Ketola 1),
• Heikki Nevanlinna 1), Tero Raita 2), and Alberto
  Blanco 1)
• Finnish Meteorological Institute,
• Space Research and Regional Weather Services
• 2) University of Oulu,
• Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory

2
Objectives

• Support auroral tourism in Finnish Lapland
• Support amateur astronomers to spot auroras
• Educate the general public about space weather
  matters
• To collect more knowledge about the connection
  between auroral occurrence and magnetic field
  time variations
• To use scientific data and knowhow also in
  commercial applications

3
Summary of user needs

• Hotels
• Real-time auroral display to hotel room TV
• Knowledge about the activity level for the coming
  night
• Cloudiness prediction for the coming night
• Amateur astronomers
• Automated auroral monitoring system to be
  connected with a service distributing
  SMS-messages
• Three level charaterization for the anticipated
  auroral occurrence probability (slightly
  enhanced, clearly enhanced, exceptionally high
  probability) separately for auroral and
  sub-auroral latitudes.
• General Public
• Nowcasting system for the magnetic activity for
  Southern Finland (space weather storm monitor)
• General information about auroras and their
  connection with other space weather phenomena.

4
Evaluation of user satisfaction

• The hotel system is usable (no technical problems
  and no clouds) for 70 of the time and it can
  characterize the auroral occurrence and intensity
  of the forthcoming or on-going auroral activity
  in 80 of the cases. The customers have been
  satisfied with this performance level.
• Evaluating the financial benefit is difficult.
  The marketing value is important, but making a
  connection between sales and this service is not
  obvious.
• Amateur astronomers It is nice to get the alarms
  also in the wilderness. Time resolution of the
  updates could be higher, e.g. 10 minutes.
• Santa Margarita Ltd provides the conversion from
  e-mails to SMS-messages. The service has 45
  customers. Price annual paymentcharge per
  message.
• General public web-site hits correlate with
  magnetic activity. Daily average 140-220, peak
  values near 500 (March 11, 2004).

5
Business plan for the hotel service

• Operating effort 7 hrs /week during the pilot
  phase, for the final service this needs to be
  reduced.
• Upgrading costs Programming work (a few weeks)
  Marketing and contract negotiations.
• Following upgrades considered for the hotel
  service
• Efficient marketing to get more customers.
• 24/7 service required in order to avoid long
  breaks in the data transmission and in the
  operation of measurement equipment.
• The coverage of auroral observations will be
  improved by adding one more ASC to the system
  (North-eastern Lapland).
• Potential market 25-35 hotels with appropriate
  Internet connections.
• Competing services have emerged!

6
Prospectives for improvements

• The hotel service would be easier to sell as a
  part of broader service (e.g. together with
  tailored weather predictions).
• Short-term predictions based on solar
  observations could be integrated to the system.
  Collaboration with the SIDC SDA (PRESTO) would be
  the most reasonable way to do this improvement.
• If prediction cababilities are added also
  warnings about their caveats must be clearly
  announced. This is a challenge especially for the
  hotel service where the available space is
  limited. The hotel customers do not necessarily
  have much background knowledge and their
  tolerance for failures is low.
• The effect of the above listed improvements on
  the sustainability of the hotel TV service would
  most probably be minimal. However, the upgraded
  service could attract new customers among parties
  arranging collective activities (e.g. outdoor
  safaris).