Enhancing Explainability in Solar Energetic Particle Event Prediction: A Global Feature Mapping Approach
This work addresses the need for interpretable predictions in solar physics, though it appears incremental in improving explainability for existing data-driven methods.
The paper tackled the problem of black-box models in solar energetic particle (SEP) event prediction by proposing a framework that integrates global explanations and feature mapping to enhance transparency, validated on a dataset of 341 SEP events.
Solar energetic particle (SEP) events, as one of the most prominent manifestations of solar activity, can generate severe hazardous radiation when accelerated by solar flares or shock waves formed aside from coronal mass ejections (CMEs). However, most existing data-driven methods used for SEP predictions are operated as black-box models, making it challenging for solar physicists to interpret the results and understand the underlying physical causes of such events rather than just obtain a prediction. To address this challenge, we propose a novel framework that integrates global explanations and ad-hoc feature mapping to enhance model transparency and provide deeper insights into the decision-making process. We validate our approach using a dataset of 341 SEP events, including 244 significant (>=10 MeV) proton events exceeding the Space Weather Prediction Center S1 threshold, spanning solar cycles 22, 23, and 24. Furthermore, we present an explainability-focused case study of major SEP events, demonstrating how our method improves explainability and facilitates a more physics-informed understanding of SEP event prediction.