An Open Platform for Validating Ambient Solar Wind Models

To drive innovation in space weather research and prediction, we need to seek out promising strategies for unifying the validation of our modeling assets. Here we present the activities of the Ambient Solar Wind Validation Team embedded in the COSPAR ISWAT initiative. Our team's mission is to create an open online platform for validating ambient solar wind models at NASA's Community Coordinated Modeling Center. This open platform will allow the community to easily assess the accuracy of state-of-the-art solar wind model solutions in terms of unified metrics, and will thereby provide an unbiased assessment of progress over time. In this presentation, we will introduce the online platform, highlight our progress in developing unified metrics for both historical and near real-time validation, and discuss the current status and future perspectives of this community effort.