UCSD Time-Dependent Tomographic Forecasting with Interplanetary Scintillation and White-Light Observations

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) time-dependent tomography program has been used successfully since the beginning of the year 2000 to remotely sense and forecast interplanetary scintillation (IPS) observations of coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Recently, this program has included real-time ACE data in the analysis. This more-efficiently extends velocity and density measurements obtained near Earth in real time to those derived from remotely-sensed observations, and allows a far more efficient extrapolation from the present time into the future. These analyses are now also used with real-time extrapolations of radial and tangential magnetic fields from the National Solar Observatory. The time-dependent program is also being adapted to provide similar forecasts (but at higher spatial and temporal resolutions) of heliospheric density using Thomson-scattering data from the Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI). Here, we describe the current state of these IPS and SMEI real-time data pipelines and show their usefulness. These demonstrate in near real-time the improved accuracy of the remote-sensing fits with the inclusion of space-borne in-situ density and velocity measurements during the current rising phase of the solar cycle.