Model/Technique Registration (*=required):
Information about your group/project:
   Name(s) and e-mail (s) (please list primary contact first)*: Sophie Murray (sophie.murray@metoffice.gov.uk), Suzy Bingham (suzy.bingham@metoffice.gov.uk)
   Associated Institution/Project name/Group name*: Met Office Space Weather Research Group
   Website url(s): http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/publicsector/emergencies/space-weather

 
Information about your method:
   Forecasting method name*: Met Office Space Weather Forecast
   Shorthand unique identifier for your method (methodname_version, e.g. ASSA_1, ASAP_201201): MO_TOT1
   Short description*: Total disk flare probabilities for M- and X- class flares for the next four days.
   References: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012ApJ...747L..41B
 
Further Model Details:
   (1)* Please specify if the forecast is human generated, human generated but model-based, model-based, or other.
A mixture! Initially model based, but these total disk forecasts are generally always human edited. Specifically, the forecasts for the next 24 hours are based on the Sunspot Region Summary values (see "Met Office Sunspot Region Summary" method description), which is based on the Poisson method in the Bloomfield paper listed above. The forecasters will edit these values for the more general Space Weather Forecast as they find appropriate (often rounding off numbers, or increasing/decreasing values they think are slightly wrong). There are also day 2, 3, and 4 forecasts for each 24-hour period that are purely human generated. They tend to be similar unless a forecaster knows an active region is coming back or leaving the disk.
 
   (2)* Does your flare prediction method forecast “M1.0-9.9” or “M and above”? Would it be difficult for you to adapt your method from one to another? Which forecast binning method do you prefer?
M1.0-9.9. Impossible to adapt as this particular method has been determined specifically for our end-users.
 
   (3)* How do you specify active regions in your model? Do you relate their location to other schemes such as NOAA or Catania? If so, what is your criteria to relate them?
In this forecast there are no active regions specified (full disk).
 
   (4)* Uncertainties given as an upper and lower bound is an optional field. Does your model provide uncertainties for the forecasted probability?
No uncertainties.
 
   (5)* For each forecast, what prediction window(s) does your method use? E.g. Does your method predict for the next 24 hours, 48, and 72 hours or the next 24 hours, 24-48 hours, 48-72 hours? (This information is useful for displaying only comparable methods together).
As mentioned above there are Day 1, 2, 3, and 4 forecasts for each 24-hour period. Therefore next 24 hours, next 24-48 hours, 48-72 hours, and 72-96 hours.