Space Weather Gets Street Cred

[Aslkahuna]

The AMS 89th Annual Meeting in Phoenix this week on Monday had a session dealing with the societal and economic impacts of major Space Weather Events as well as progress being made to understand these events and better forecast them. With our technology base becoming more and more Space based and along with the realization that Solar activity may have implications in the Climate Change debate, this is a field becoming more important. Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences last week released a study that detailed the impact a superflare and it's effects similar to the event of September 1, 1859 could have on our power grids, communications, satellite system, navigation systems, etc. They concluded that the impact could be greater in terms of societal disruption and economic losses than any surface based disaster scenario including the Big One in CA and repeat of the 1926 Miami Hurricane-particularly since the impact would be Global. Fortunately, such events are rare but even a simple major event can have impacts have we have found out in the past. I realize that Space Weather is a semi taboo subject and one relegated to the outskirts of this site but with NOAA taking the Civilian and USAF the Military lead on this field it's one we are going see increased emphasis on in the future and in fact affects those who are trying to enter the forecasting field now.

Steve

[senorpepr]

Thanks Steve for posting this. I look forward to seeing light brought to this subject.

Are there any links from the AMS meeting regarding Space Wx?

[Aslkahuna]

Here's the URL for the complete program of the Sixth Symposium on Space Weather.

http://ams.confex.com/ams/89annual/tech ... ed_514.htm

Some papers deal with coupling between the lower and upper atmosphere.

Steve