. 24/7 Space News .
SOLAR SCIENCE
Solar storm researchers prepare for the 'big one' with new urgency
by Staff Writers
Newark NJ (SPX) Apr 08, 2016


NJIT's Louis Lanzerotti addressing the risks to ground and space-based technology from space weather at a conference in Washington, D.C. that drew experts in the field from the federal government, the military, academia and private industry. Image courtesy of the Universities Space Research Association.

The specter of a geomagnetic solar storm with the ferocity to disrupt communications satellites, knock out GPS systems, shut down air travel and quench lights, computers and telephones in millions of homes for days, months or even years has yet to grip the public as a panic-inducing possibility.

But it is a scenario that space scientists, global insurance corporations and government agencies from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to NASA to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) take seriously, calling it a "low probability but high-impact event" that merits a substantial push on several fronts: research, forecasting and mitigation strategy.

Space Weather Experts Gather
At a recent conference in Washington, D.C. that drew space weather specialists from academia, the federal government, the military and private industry, Louis Lanzerotti, distinguished research professor at NJIT's Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research, summed up the implications of a massive, well-timed solar storm for today's technology-based, hyper-connected global society:

"Since the development of the electrical telegraph in the 1840s, space weather processes have affected the design, implementation and operation of many engineered systems, at first on Earth and now in space," noted Lanzerotti, a panelist at the conference. "As the complexity of such systems increases, as new technologies are invented and deployed, and as humans have ventured beyond Earth's surface, both human-built systems and humans themselves become more susceptible to the effects of Earth's space environment."

In addition to disrupting communications and energy grids, what is broadly known as space weather - powerful bursts of electromagnetic radiation, energetic charged particles and magnetized plasma - has the potential to corrode water and sewer pipelines, to erase historical data stored in computer memory, to undermine military and security operations and to harm astronauts traveling in space.

The symposium, "Space Weather Science and Applications: Research for Today, Training for Tomorrow," sponsored by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, focused on the growing urgency for both basic scientific research and the development of practical applications in the field.

"Once systems start to fail, (the outages) could cascade in ways we can't even conceive," said Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado-Boulder and also a panelist, who recommends increasing support for the development of engineering systems and devices capable of protecting Earth's infrastructure.

Trillion Dollar Recovery
In a 2013 report, Lloyd's of London, the insurance market, put the population at risk of a massive storm at "between 20-40 million with durations up to 1-2 years," depending "largely on the availability of spare replacement transformers." The cost of such a recovery would range between $600 billion and $2.6 trillion.

The symposium followed on the heels of a conference late last year, "Space Weather: Understanding Potential Impacts and Building Resilience," convened in Washington, D.C. under the auspices of the Executive Office of the President of the United States and also attended by scientists and engineers from academia and industry, as well as policymakers and elected officials. At that time, the OSTP laid out a multi-part action plan to address, as Lanzerotti put it, "civil societal issues related to all aspects of space weather."

In an op-ed piece that followed, Lanzerotti, who was also panelist at that conference, called the federal plan "impressive for its analyses and coverage of the measurements, data, and models that will be required to ensure security under space weather events of all types--from huge geomagnetic storm-produced telluric currents initiated by coronal mass ejections to solar radio-produced outages of GPS receivers to radiation effects by magnetosphere, solar and galactic radiation to satellite drag effects from Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere."

These areas are the focus of NJIT's Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research, which has a variety of instruments in space and on the ground for observing and recording space weather, including the world's largest solar optical telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory, a solar radio telescope array in Owens Valley, instruments across Antarctica and aboard spacecraft in the Van Allen radiation belts.

At the recent symposium, Tamara Dickinson, the principal assistant director for environment and energy at the OSTP, described recent minor storms that had caused disruption: a blackout in Sweden during which NASA also detected anomalies in deep space missions and several years later, the interruption of flight-control systems, again in Sweden, that halted air traffic.

Setting Benchmarks to Assess Risks to Critical Infrastructure
Dickinson said the government is "at a "fundamental turning point" in its approach to space weather planning and prepared to "take decisive action to address this risk."

Ralph Stoffler, the director of weather, deputy chief of staff for operations at U.S. Air Force headquarters in Washington, said the Air Force was currently expanding its network of sensors to monitor space weather, including placing them on all of its satellites.

"We need data to support particular military operations," Stoffler said, adding that the Air Force relies on GPS for missions such as piloting remote aircraft in Afghanistan from the U.S. "If we can predict space weather, we can have other operations in place or delay."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has recently added space weather to its daily operations briefings. "We know there is a gap in our ability to assess vulnerability and consequences," said Jack Anderson, a senior analyst at DHS's National Protection and Programs Directorate, adding that while there is currently no scale for predicting the magnitude of a storm as exists for hurricanes, for example, "we need to develop that at FEMA."

William Lapenta, director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said his agency's goal was to track solar storms "from sun to mud," to predict where conditions following a coronal mass ejection, for example, would be most intense in the ionosphere and on Earth in the form of underground electrical currents, and to calculate impacts on a variety of systems.

One of the near-term challenges for policymakers will be to set benchmarks for assessing the vulnerability of various technology systems and establishing thresholds that would trigger protective or recovery responses, said William Murtagh, the assistant director for the space weather, energy and environment division at the OSTP. There are currently working groups focused on these benchmark amid efforts to reach out to other countries to establish international protocols for aviation conditions, mitigation strategies and data sharing, among other areas.

"We do not fully understand those upper boundaries, but we need to ... once we understand how big these storms are we can develop trigger points," he said, adding that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was interested in the "10,000-year storm - that's what they need to know."

"The technological and biological impacts of severe space weather events are now firmly in the federal government's sights," noted Andrew Gerrard, director of NJIT's Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research. "All things being equal, increased research funding from the represented federal agencies will further bolster the incorporation of 'space weather' into our daily lives. Such development will enable the solar-terrestrial community to, for the first time, see a solar storm, track its approach, and prepare accordingly."


Thanks for being here;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once


credit card or paypal
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5 Billed Monthly


paypal only


.


Related Links
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Solar Science News at SpaceDaily






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle

Previous Report
SOLAR SCIENCE
Solar Wind Induces Jupiter's X-ray Aurora
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Mar 25, 2016
Jupiter boasts some of the most powerful auroras in the solar system. Compared to the Earth's aurora, Jupiter's is a few hundred times more powerful and brighter across the entire spectrum. What causes Jupiter's powerful aurora? Several hypotheses have been proposed, but it has remained a mystery due to a lack of observational evidence. Jupiter's X-ray aurora, which is observed in the X-ra ... read more


SOLAR SCIENCE
The Moon thought to play a major role in maintaining Earth's magnetic field

Moon Mission: A Blueprint for the Red Planet

The Lunar Race That Isn't

Earth's moon wandered off axis billions of years ago

SOLAR SCIENCE
Help keep heat on Mars Express through data mining

Ancient Mars bombardment likely enhanced life-supporting habitat

Opportunity's Devilish View from on High

Mars Longevity Champion Launched 15 Years Ago

SOLAR SCIENCE
Spanish port becomes global 'smart city' laboratory

Silicon Beach: LA tech hub where the sun always shines

New DNA/RNA Tool to Diagnose, Treat Diseases

ASU to develop the next generation science education courseware for NASA

SOLAR SCIENCE
Lessons learned from Tiangong 1

China launches SJ-10 retrievable space science probe

Has Tiangong 1 gone rogue

China's 1st space lab Tiangong-1 ends data service

SOLAR SCIENCE
Dragon and Cygnus To Meet For First Time In Space

Russian cargo ship docks successfully with space station

Russia launches cargo ship to space station

Cargo ship reaches space station on resupply run

SOLAR SCIENCE
Atlas V OA-6 Anomaly Status

Boeing takes steps to block sale of Sea Launch

Reusing Falcon 9 boosters would slash costs by 30 percent

NASA Progresses Toward SpaceX Resupply Mission to Space Station

SOLAR SCIENCE
ALMA's most detailed image of a protoplanetary disc

Searching for Far Out and Wandering Worlds

Planet formation in Earth-like orbit around a young star

NASA's Spitzer Maps Climate Patterns on a Super-Earth

SOLAR SCIENCE
Record-breaking steel could be used for body armor, shields for satellites

Light helps develop programmable materials

Upgrade to offer power boost to world's brightest X-ray laser

Artificial molecules









The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.