A Meta-analysis of Requirements for Magnetograms for Space Weather

Future space weather forecasts will rely on the concepts and tools now being developed using the current generation of space weather instrumentation. To understand the requirements for future operational instrumentation, and solar magnetographs in particular, we explore the current state of research through a form of meta-analysis of recent literature. We compare the scientific impact of existing observation systems as measured by publications based on their data and the resulting citations of those publications. With this overview, we delve into what lead to these different outcomes and extract lessons-learned for future observing systems. We conclude that there is a growing need for vector magnetograms with consistent image quality, higher resolution in time and space and improved sensitivity to weak fields than current operational instruments.