Welcome to the Flare Prediction System. This page gives the active regions on the Sun today together with each regions probability for producing C-, M-, or X-class events. The flare probabilities were calculated using
NOAA Space Environment Center data from nearly eight years of data starting November 1988 and ending June 1996. The percentage probabilities are based on the number of flares produced by regions classified using the McIntosh classification scheme (McIntosh, P., 1990,
Solar Physics,
125, 251) during cycle 22. For example, between November 1988 and June 1996 there were 302 regions classified Eai. As this class produced 62 M-class events, the mean M-class flare rate is ~62/302 or ~0.21 flares per day. Assuming the number of flares per unit time is governed by Poisson statistics, we can estimate a flaring probability for the following 24-hours using P( one or more flares ) = 1 - exp( -mean ), i.e., P = 1 - exp( -0.21 ) ~ 0.19, or 19% for an Eai class region to produce one or more M-class flares in the next 24-hours. See Wheatland, M. S., 2001,
Solar Physics,
203, 87 and Moon
et al., 2001,
Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics,
106(A12) 29951 for further details.
Click
here for a description of the various active region classifications from the Royal Observatory of Belgium.