On the potential of interplanetary scintillation for predicting geomagnetic activity

A survey of IPS, geomagnetic and inter‐planetary medium data has been used to interpret the weak correlation between IPS data and geomagnetic activity. Our results indicate that: (i) we can use IPS data to predict the maximum possible level of geomagnetic activity, given the state of the solar wind; but (ii) to predict the actual level of activity we also require an estimate the coupling between the solar wind and the magnetosphere. This is the first time that the potential (and the limitations) of IPS for predicting geomagnetic activity have been demonstrated quantitatively in a comprehensive survey.