SWE major research goal: to accurately forecast local ground geomagnetic disturbances from solar observations. This goal will be achieved through the CARRINGTON project funded by the Spanish Government under the call on Excellent Science (AYA2016-80881-P). This project has three major complementary objectives: (1) to discover reliably the solar precursors associated to the interplanetary features that trigger the large disturbances on ground; (2) to include in the analysis of large hazardous geomagnetic disturbances those with a local character, which can only be monitored with high-resolution local magnetic indices, and (3) to develop solar monitoring tools and disturbance models to be implemented in the Spanish Space Weather Service.

SWE is analyzing the Sun Brightness Temperature in L-Band and the Stokes polarization parameters from the ESA SMOS Mission in collaboration with Deimos Space and funded by ESA. Complementary measurements used in the analysis include the soft X-ray flux from GOES mission, radio emission from space and ground-based observatories, LASCO and STEREO coronagraphs images and solar disk images from SDO mission. The project will also issue recommendations for the operational use of SMOS data as an asset to SWE monitoring and the possibility of continuing missions in this regard.

SWE has developed more than ten space weather products including geomagnetic indices, alarm systems, prediction services and new scales to quantify the severity of the space weather event. These products are available through the Spanish Space Weather Service (http://www.senmes.es) and through the ESA SSA SWE Network (http://swe.ssa.esa.int/) making the University of Alcala the unique ESA SWE Expert Group in Spain. The maintenance of the products includes monitoring and supervising of products execution, collecting information and reporting to ESA through the corresponding Expert Center.

SWE is leading the project SWE-MED funded by ESA. The objectives of SWE-MED are to identify how the SSA SWE segment customer requirements need to be enhanced and tailored to best meet the needs of end users operating in the Mediterranean region. Several gaps have already been identified, as the need of local/regional geomagnetic indices.

Students are involved in the SWE activities. Some examples are the Very Low frequency antenna to measure solar flares fully developed by two students of the Degree on Telecommunication technologies engineering, or the setup of a magnetometer by a student of the Degree on Electronics and industrial automation engineering, including an analysis of the noise sources.  And of course, several Master and PhD thesis have been developed and are on-going in the SWE group.