Mid-term forecasts extend these forecasts out to several months. Long-range forecasts can cover some parameters of the solar cycle out through ten years. They are issued on a daily schedule which allows time for the full use of all computing tools, albeit within a rigid timelines. Longer range solar cycle forecasts are issued monthly and computed automatically. Post-analysis is used to identify the space weather factors that may have contributed to the operational anomaly of systems affected by space weather.
Observations are critical for analyzing the state of the environment when the anomaly occurred.
Immediate post-analysis is required to identify whether a communications outage is due to an engineering problem or is due to a space weather effect. Post-analysis is a valuable tool in providing input into improvements in engineering designs of systems. While not a product, specification is the starting point for the products described above. Specification refers to the fusion of all available observations into a coherent and realistic representation of the state of the environment at the time of the observations. The ability to nowcast is only as good as the quality and timelines of the observational data received and the effectiveness of models in fusing the data into coherent representations of the environment.