Flare forecasting at the Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre

The Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre produces 24/7/365 space weather guidance, alerts, and forecasts to a wide range of government and commercial end-users across the United Kingdom. Solar flare forecasts are one of its products, which are issued multiple times a day in two forms: forecasts for each active region on the solar disk over the next 24 h and full-disk forecasts for the next 4 days. Here the forecasting process is described in detail, as well as first verification of archived forecasts using methods commonly used in operational weather prediction. Real-time verification available for operational flare forecasting use is also described. The influence of human forecasters is highlighted, with human-edited forecasts outperforming original model results and forecasting skill decreasing over longer forecast lead times. Plain Language Summary The Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre produces 24/7/365 space weather guidance, alerts, and forecasts to a wide range of end-users across the United Kingdom. This paper describes the center's solar flare forecasting process in detail, as well as showing first verification results of the forecasts using methods commonly used in operational weather prediction. Results highlight the important role of the human forecaster in operational space weather forecasting, as well as the difficulty forecasting over longer time periods.