Origin of flares and CMEs, CME evolution in the interplanetary space, CME interaction with CME and CIR, ICMEs and geoeffectiveness, Solar energetic particle events, space weather prediction using solar observations, range of properties and occurrence up to extreme events, historical events, can we forecast them.

Sunspot number, total and spectral irradiance, solar wind and geomagnetic activity. How well can we predict them from solar dynamo theory and what is the expected evolution in the next decades? Mechanisms of influences on climate: TSI and SSI, direct and indirect effects of EPP, GCR, atmospheric electric circuit. How can we quantify the impact? How is developing the climate of the upper atmosphere?

The response of the Earth's space and atmospheric environment to solar drivers varies significantly as a function of height. This session explores the factors involved in this varied responses in the magnetosphere, ionosphere, and atmosphere, and their impacts on the terrestrial and technological systems, and explores the extent to which this response can be predicted.

With an unimpressive start of weak flare and moderately fast CME, this event produced the largest geomagnetic storm and radiation belt storm in the solar cycle 24. It is an outstanding example of how space weather prediction agencies failed to predict a highly hazardous event. This focused campaign study will foster inter-discipline collaboration on scientific understanding of the Sun-to-Mud process and examine the implication for prediction. Other events of specific significance can also be included in this session.

This session reviews all the modeling efforts from the sun to the earth and all steps in between. Efforts of connecting models at different regions are welcome. Validation of the models based on ground-based and satellite measurements will be also discussed.

In order to promote interdisciplinary science from the sun to the earth, data archiving efforts are essential. This session will be used to review various data archiving efforts and their mutual link as well as development of visualization tools and plotting software.

Understanding the evolution of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) is fundamental to advancing our knowledge of energy and mass transport in the solar system, thus also rendering it crucial to space weather and its prediction. The advent of truly wide-angle heliospheric imaging has revolutionised the study of CMEs, by enabling their direct and continuous observation as they propagate from the Sun out to 1 AU and beyond. The recently initiated EU-funded FP7 Heliospheric Cataloguing, Analysis and Technique Service (HELCATS) project combines European expertise in the field of heliospheric imaging, built up over the last decade in particular through lead involvement in NASA’s STEREO mission, with expertise in such areas as solar and coronal imaging as well as the interpretation of in-situ and radio diagnostic measurements of solar wind phenomena.

The goals of HELCATS include the cataloguing and modelling of CMEs and Corotating Interaction Regions (CIRs) observed in the heliosphere by the Heliospheric Imager (HI) instruments on the STEREO spacecraft, since their launch in late October 2006 to date, an interval that covers much of the historically weak solar cycle 24. Included in the catalogues are estimates of the kinematic properties of the imaged CMEs and CIRs, based on a variety of established, and some more speculative, modelling approaches (geometrical, forward, inverse, magneto-hydrodynamic); these kinematic properties are verified through comparisons with solar disc and coronal imaging observations, as well as through comparison with radio diagnostic and in-situ measurements made at multiple points throughout the heliosphere. In this dedicated HELCATS session we invite authors to submit papers directly associated with the creation and/or exploitation of HELCATS catalogues.