Short-term forecasting of medium- and high-intensity solar flares: A comparison between transformers and classical models

Solar flares are sudden, violent events that occur in the sun’s atmosphere and release large amounts of radiation. These phenomena can impact technological systems on Earth and in orbit, causing financial losses and endangering human life. Thus, forecasting these flares is crucial to mitigating their effects. Solar activity is monitored using specialized instruments that provide data for machine learning analysis. Researchers use various algorithms for this purpose. However, most works focus on