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STEREO as well as a number of ground-based
facilities. Despite a small and unstable budget (roughly $6 million to
$7 million U.S. dollars annually) that limits capabilities, the SWPC has
experienced a steady growth in customer base, even during the solar
minimum years, when disturbance activity is lower. The focus of the
USAF’s space weather effort is on providing situational knowledge of the
real-time space weather environment and assessments of the impacts of
space weather on different Department of Defense missions. The Air Force
uses NOAA data combined with data from its own assets such as the
Defense Meteorological Satellites Program satellites, the
Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System, the Solar
Electro-Optical Network, the Digital Ionospheric Sounding System, and
the GPS network.
NASA is the third major element in the nation’s
space weather infrastructure. Although NASA’s role is scientific rather
than operational, NASA science missions such as ACE provide critical
space weather information, and NASA’s Living with a Star program targets
research and technologies that are relevant to operations.
NASA-developed products that are candidates for eventual transfer from
research to operations include sensor technology and physics-based space
weather models that can be transitioned into operational tools for
forecasting and situational awareness.
Other key elements of the nation’s space weather
infrastructure are the solar and space physics research community and
the emerging commercial space weather businesses. Of particular
importance are the efforts of these sectors in the area of model
development.
Space Weather Forecasting: Capabilities and Limitations
One of the important functions of a nation’s
space weather infrastructure is to provide reliable long-term forecasts,
although the importance of forecasts varies according to industry.2 With long-term (1- to 3-day) forecasts and minimal false alarms,3
the various user communities can take actions to mitigate the effects
of impending solar disturbances and to minimize their economic impact.
Currently, NOAA’s SWPC can make probability forecasts of space weather
events with varying degrees of success. For example, the SWPC can, with
moderate confidence, predict the occurrence probability of a geomagnetic
storm or an X-class flare 1 to 3 days in advance, whereas its
capability to provide even short-term (less than 1 day) or long-term
forecasts of ionospheric disturbances—information important for GPS
users—is poor. The SWPC has identified a number of critical steps needed
to improve its forecasting capability, enabling it, for example, to
provide high-confidence long- and short-term forecasts of geomagnetic
storms and ionospheric disturbances. These steps include securing an
operational solar wind monitor at L1; transitioning research models
(e.g., of coronal mass ejection propagation, the geospace radiation
environment, and the coupled magnetosphere/ionosphere/atmosphere system)
into operations, and developing precision GPS forecast and correction
tools. The requirement for a solar wind monitor at L1 is particularly
important because ACE, the SWPC’s sole source of real-time upstream
solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field data, is well beyond its
planned operational life, and provisions to replace it have not been
made.
UNDERSTANDING THE SOCIETAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF SEVERE SPACE WEATHER
The title of the workshop on which this report
is based, “The Societal and Economic Impacts of Severe Space Weather,”
perhaps promised more than this subsequent report can fully deliver.
What emerged from the presentations and discussions at the workshop is
that the invited experts understand well the effects of at least
moderately severe space weather on specific technologies, and in many
cases know what is required to mitigate them, whether enhanced
forecasting and monitoring capabilities, new technologies (new GPS
signals and codes, new-generation radiation-hardened electronics), or
improved operational procedures. Limited information was also
provided—and captured in this report—on the costs of space
weather-induced outages (e.g., $50 million to $70 million to restore the
$290 million Anik E2 to operational status) as well as of
non-space-weather-related events that can serve as proxies for
disruptions caused by severe space storms (e.g., $4 billion to $10
billion for the power blackout of August 2003), and an estimate of $1
trillion to $2 trillion during the first year alone was given for the
societal and economic costs of a “severe geomagnetic storm scenario”
with recovery times of 4 to 10 years.
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