UAF Forecasts Northern Lights Viewing
November 9, 2006 by Mary Jo Manzanares
Filed under Things to See & Do
If you’ll be traveling in Alaska here is one site that you need to bookmark and come back to often, the University of Alaska at Fairbank’s Geophysical Institute.
There’s a bunch of stuff there that I don’t understand, but the really important information for travelers is that the site tries to forecast the aurora borealis.
The Northern Lights are unpredictable, at best, and I’ve only seen them a handful of times, but now the UAF tries to map out a 28-day forecast. Just like you check the weather forecast, now you can check the aurora borealis forecast.
The downside to the forecasting, however, is that although the lights may be dancing all over the sky, a cloud layer, or some other weather problem, can still inhibit the viewing.
Still, I think this is very cool.
Via Gadling
Predicting aurorae is really tough. Fairly accurate predictions can only be made hours in advance. Some general probabilities for aurorae can often be made days in advance, and recently those forecasts have gotten much better. But what UAF is doing is a major advance in being able to predict that conditions may exist leading to a greater than average chance of auroral activity or weeks ahead, based on projected solar activity (which we are only just a handle on predicting, too). It is still pretty crude in terms of forecasting, but it is a MAJOR advancement over only a few years ago.
It’s not a perfect predictor, but then what is? I’m amazed what a major advancement this is, too, and wonder where we’ll be another few years from now.