The development of NICT Real-time Space Weather Integrated Simulator

A need of space weather forecasting, which is a technique to understand and forecast of space environment, has been growing recently. The present space weather forecasting is qualitative, and the method is reliant of empirical technique. However, a quantitative forecasting is required to avoid the critical hazards caused by space environment disturbances. To realize the quantitative or numerical forecasting, the reproduction of space environment disturbance in real time by computer simulations is essential. Also, since space environment disturbance is complex system as which the Sun - solar wind - magnetosphere - ionosphere - thermosphere connect, it is not enough to simulate an isolated region in the system only, for example, magnetosphere simulator. Therefore, integrating from the Sun to the Earth and simulating in real-time are very important for the numerical space weather forecasting. National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) is developing the "NICT real-time space weather integrated simulator", which is connected the Sun - solar wind - magnetosphere - ionosphere - thermosphere, to realize the numerical space weather forecasting. We introduce the "NICT real-time space weather integrated simulator" in this presentation.