A nowcasting and even forecast of the auroral oval position and intensity is a highly needed resource for practical applications. The auroral oval is the region with a high level of ionospheric plasma turbulence, which provokes malfunctions of radio communication and navigation satellite systems, and the region with most intense irregular ionospheric electrojet exciting the geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) in electric power lines. We have elaborated a web service (http://aurora-forecast.ru) for continuous nowcasting, visualization and short-term forecast of auroras. The implementation tool of the developed geographic information system (GIS) is the Django framework. The web service is a software shell built on the basis of a virtual globe - a multi-scale digital 3D model of the Earth, rendering visualization of data provided by the NOAA service on the planetary distribution of the probability of the aurora occurrence. The NOAA service uses the output of the OVATION-prime model, which gives a forecast of auroras in advance of 30 minutes with a 5-minute update step, using real-time data from interplanetary monitors of the solar wind. The developed web-service can be used both to assess the probability of observing auroras anywhere in the world. This service may help to predict the deterioration of the satellite navigation signal quality or warn about possibility of intense GICs at high latitudes.
Space weather, aurora, GIS technology, auroral oval
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