- IBM teamed with NASA to develop an AI model capable of predicting solar flares well before they occur
- Solar weather is known to negatively impact communications systems, including GPS and satellite broadband
- The model is being offered in both model libraries and as an open-source model
Here comes the Sun, or rather Surya, a new AI model from IBM and NASA that can help predict violent solar flares that impact astronauts, GPS and communications systems.
The model was created using 9 years of raw data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and aims to advance solar weather forecasting. Thus far, it seems to provide an extra hour of warning time in predicting solar flares and a 16% improvement in classifying flare types.
IBM said the model will initially be tested and used primarily by the scientific community. Think of folks in the solar physics community who are trying to gain a better understanding of what’s happening on the Sun.
The model could also be useful for telecom, as satellites, which are increasingly being used for home broadband and mobile connections, are susceptible to interference from solar events like flares and buildups of extreme ultraviolet radiation.
“Space weather is known to impact power systems, satellites, GPS positioning and communication cables,” Johannes Schmude, IBM Senior Research Scientist, told Fierce.
Notably, Starlink in February 2022 lost 38 of 49 satellites it launched into space due to solar-driven geomagnetic storms. Starlink’s satellite broadband service also suffered a solar-caused disruption in May 2024. Some super smart science people did a deep, DEEP dive into exactly why and how solar weather impacts satellites, but the TL:DR version goes something like geomagnetic storms + satellites = bad news.
“The largest known solar storm in history, the Carrington Event of 1859, caused telegraph stations to spark and catch fire,” Schmude continued. “Now that our world is so much more dependent on technology for our infrastructure, we are even more vulnerable to solar activity that can disrupt Earth’s geomagnetic field."
Eventually, once the scientific community has put the model through its paces, telecom engineers and others can use the model to better understand the impact of solar events on their equipment, Schmude added.
Surya is being made available on Hugging Face, GitHub and TerraTorch, with an open source version called SuryaBench also up for grabs.