Mid-term forecasts extend these forecasts out to several months. Long-range forecasts can cover some parameters of the solar cycle out through 10 years. They are issued on a daily schedule that allows time for the full use of all computing tools, albeit within a rigid timeline. 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 operational anomalies 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 observed anomalous behavior of a system was caused by space weather or by other factors such as mechanical failure, engineering design problems, software errors, etc. Post-analysis is a valuable tool in providing input into improvements in engineering designs of systems. Although specification is not a product, it 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.