LOFAR4SpaceWeather (LOFAR4SW) - Increasing European Space-Weather Capability with Europe's Largest Radio Telescope: Preparing for the Critical Design Review (CDR)

The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) consists of a dense core of 24 stations near Exloo in The Netherlands, an additional 14 stations spread across the northeast Netherlands, and a further 14 stations based internationally across Europe. These international stations are six in Germany, three in northern Poland, and one each in France, Ireland, Latvia, Sweden, and the UK. LOFAR can observe over a wide bandwidth of radio frequencies (~10-250 MHz) at high spatial/temporal resolutions. It has capabilities that enable studies of several aspects of space weather to be progressed well beyond today's state-of-the-art. However, with its present governance it can only be used for space-weather campaign studies. This severely limits LOFAR's ability to contribute to space-weather monitoring/forecast beyond its core strength of enabling world-leading scientific research.

The LOFAR For Space Weather (LOFAR4SW) project (see: http://lofar4sw.eu/) is a Horizon 2020 (H2020) INFRADEV design study to undertake investigations into upgrading LOFAR to allow for regular space-weather science/monitoring observations in parallel with normal radio-astronomy/scientific operations. This involves all aspects of political, user, forecaster, and scientific engagement with various stakeholders with the full recognition that space weather is a worldwide threat with varied local, regional, continent-wide impacts, and global impacts.

Here, we summarise the most-recent key aspects of the LOFAR4SW progress including outputs/progress following the Detailed Design Review (DDR) and User Workshop, and particularly our plans for the Critical Design Review (CDR) which is now delayed due to COVID-19 effects on project progress.

A fully-envisage longer-term goal of enable a LOFAR4SW update would make LOFAR one of Europe's most-comprehensive space-weather observing systems capable of shedding new light on several aspects of the space-weather system, from the Sun to the solar wind to Jupiter and Earth's ionosphere.