Auroras Now! Kirsti Kauristie 1), Anssi Mälkki 1), Anneli Ketola 1), Heikki Nevanlinna 1), Tero Raita 2), and Alberto Blanco 1) 1)Finnish Meteorological Institute, Space Research and Regional Weather Services 2) University of Oulu, Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory

Objectives Support auroral tourism in Finnish Lapland Support amateur astronomers to spot auroras Educate the general public about space weather matters To collect more knowledge about the connection between auroral occurrence and magnetic field time variations To use scientific data and knowhow also in commercial applications

Summary of user needs Hotels Real-time auroral display to hotel room TV Knowledge about the activity level for the coming night Cloudiness prediction for the coming night Amateur astronomers Automated auroral monitoring system to be connected with a service distributing SMS-messages Three level charaterization for the anticipated auroral occurrence probability (slightly enhanced, clearly enhanced, exceptionally high probability) separately for auroral and sub-auroral latitudes. General Public Nowcasting system for the magnetic activity for Southern Finland (space weather storm monitor) General information about auroras and their connection with other space weather phenomena.

Evaluation of user satisfaction The hotel system is usable (no technical problems and no clouds) for 70% of the time and it can characterize the auroral occurrence and intensity of the forthcoming or on-going auroral activity in 80% of the cases. The customers have been satisfied with this performance level. Evaluating the financial benefit is difficult. The marketing value is important, but making a connection between sales and this service is not obvious. Amateur astronomers: It is nice to get the alarms also in the wilderness. Time resolution of the updates could be higher, e.g. 10 minutes. Santa Margarita Ltd provides the conversion from s to SMS- messages. The service has 45 customers. Price: annual payment+charge per message. General public: web-site hits correlate with magnetic activity. Daily average , peak values near 500 (March 11, 2004).

Business plan for the hotel service: Operating effort: ~7 hrs /week during the pilot phase, for the final service this needs to be reduced. Upgrading costs: Programming work (a few weeks) + Marketing and contract negotiations. Following upgrades considered for the hotel service Efficient marketing to get more customers. 24/7 service required in order to avoid long breaks in the data transmission and in the operation of measurement equipment. The coverage of auroral observations will be improved by adding one more ASC to the system (North-eastern Lapland). Potential market: hotels with appropriate Internet connections. Competing services have emerged!

Prospectives for improvements The hotel service would be easier to sell as a part of broader service (e.g. together with tailored weather predictions). Short-term predictions based on solar observations could be integrated to the system. Collaboration with the SIDC SDA (PRESTO) would be the most reasonable way to do this improvement. If prediction cababilities are added also warnings about their caveats must be clearly announced. This is a challenge especially for the hotel service where the available space is limited. The hotel customers do not necessarily have much background knowledge and their tolerance for failures is low. The effect of the above listed improvements on the sustainability of the hotel TV service would most probably be minimal. However, the upgraded service could attract new customers among parties arranging collective activities (e.g. outdoor safaris).