Towards using modern data assimilation and weather forecasting methods in solar physics

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We discuss how data assimilation and forecasting methods developed in Earth's weather prediction models could be used to improve our capability to anticipate solar dynamical phenomena and assimilate the huge amount of data that new solar satellites, such as SDO or Hinode, will provide in the coming years. We illustrate with some simple examples such as the solar magnetic activity cycle, the eruption of CMEs, the real potential of such methods for solar physics. We believe that we now need to jointly develop solar forecasting models, whose purpose are to assimilate observational data in order to improve our predictability power, with “first principle” solar models, whose purpose is to understand the underpinning physical processes behind the solar dynamics. These two complementary approaches should lead to the development of a solar equivalent of Earth's general circulation model. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)