In terrestrial weather prediction, Data Assimilation (DA) has enabled huge improvements in
operational forecasting capabilities. It does this by producing more accurate initial conditions
and/or model parameters for forecasting; reducing the impacts of the butterfly effect.
However, data assimilation is still in its infancy in space weather applications and it is not
quantitatively understood how DA can improve space weather forecasts. A solar wind DA
scheme has been developed and used to assimilate observations from STEREO A …