ANGEO Annales Geophysicae ANGEO Ann. Geophys. 1432-0576 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/angeo-26-3989-2008 Forecasting intense geomagnetic activity using interplanetary magnetic field data Saiz E. 1 Cid C. 1 Cerrato Y. 1 Space Research Group-Science, Departamento de Física, Universidad de Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain 08 12 2008 26 12 3989 3998 Copyright: © 2008 E. Saiz et al. 2008 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://angeo.copernicus.org/articles/26/3989/2008/angeo-26-3989-2008.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://angeo.copernicus.org/articles/26/3989/2008/angeo-26-3989-2008.pdf

Southward interplanetary magnetic fields are considered traces of geoeffectiveness since they are a main agent of magnetic reconnection of solar wind and magnetosphere. The first part of this work revises the ability to forecast intense geomagnetic activity using different procedures available in the literature. The study shows that current methods do not succeed in making confident predictions. This fact led us to develop a new forecasting procedure, which provides trustworthy results in predicting large variations of <I>D<sub>st</sub></I> index over a sample of 10 years of observations and is based on the value <I>B<sub>z</sub></I> only. The proposed forecasting method appears as a worthy tool for space weather purposes because it is not affected by the lack of solar wind plasma data, which usually occurs during severe geomagnetic activity. Moreover, the results obtained guide us to provide a new interpretation of the physical mechanisms involved in the interaction between the solar wind and the magnetosphere using Faraday's law.

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