The Los Alamos dynamic radiation environment assimilation model (DREAM) for space weather specification and forecasting

The Dynamic Radiation Environment Assimilation Model (DREAM) was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory to assess, quantify, and predict the hazards from the natural space environment and the anthropogenic environment produced by high altitude nuclear explosions (HANE). DREAM was initially developed as a basic research activity to understand and predict the dynamics of the Earth's Van Allen radiation belts. It uses Kalman filter techniques to assimilate data from space environment instruments with a physics-based model of the radiation belts. DREAM can assimilate data from a variety of types of instruments and data with various levels of resolution and fidelity by assigning appropriate uncertainties to the observations. Data from any spacecraft orbit can be assimilated but DREAM was designed to function with as few as two spacecraft inputs: one from geosynchronous orbit and one from GPS orbit. With those inputs, DREAM can be used to predict the environment at any satellite in any orbit whether space environment data are available in those orbits or not. Even with very limited data input and relatively simple physics models, DREAM specifies the space environment in the radiation belts to a high level of accuracy. DREAM has been extensively tested and evaluated as we transition from research to operations. We report here on one set of test results in which we predict the environment in a highly-elliptical polar orbit. We also discuss long-duration reanalysis for spacecraft design, using DREAM for real-time operations, and prospects for 1-week forecasts of the radiation belt environment.