Space Weather Secrets

keitsi69 writes "Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) has a story about space weather: "Intense solar particle emissions hit the earth's ionosphere bringing large electrical fields with them. They can damage or knock-out satellites, corrode oil pipelines and cause electricity transformers to stop working. Hence, the necessity of space weather forecasting, Professor Pulkkinen notes." Pretty interesting. Soon we all will be watching space forecasts..."

Comments

Space Weather

[Smidge204]

Some people are way ahead of you. ;)

Ironically, I think their forcasts are more accurate than our local guys.
=Smidge=

Re:Space Weather

[mmontour]

Also here and here.

Re:Space Weather

[Gamasta]

Ironically, I think their forcasts are more accurate than our local guys

No irony, our weather depends on space weather, so you could expect that it's harder to predict our weather because it has more things interfering ;-).

I was reading about old works on weather forecast (old=1963). Everybody who works on attractors after this year quotes this Lorenz (J. Atm. Sci., 1963)... Cute pictures.

Which leads me to a different point. People often try do describe earth's weather as a strange chaotic attractor, because so many things make it vary and because unprecise measurments may lead to very different results. I wonder if such thing is applyable to space forecasts...

Predictability

[matman]

News really should be new. The behavior of the sun and the 'weather' that it generates is relatively predictable. When sensitive things are built to be sent into space, or even built for use here on earth, they are built to take solar radiation into account. There are procedures in place to cope with larger solar events (X class solar flares and the like). The only real impact that most people see is aurora borealis (if only news outlets would start reporting on POSITIVE things). Yes, if you're out in space, flying in a jet for long periods at high alititudes, building sensitive electronics, or are an astronomer (amature or otherwise) you should worry about solar activity. If something happens that's major, you'll be sure to hear about it on the 7 oclock news, just like you always do when there's a potential for doom (even then, don't bet on doom, of course)

Re:Predictability

[hubie]

N.B. Space weather is much less predictable than terrestrial weather, and that is not well at all. Sometimes flare events cause space weather events at earth, sometimes not. Space weather events increase with solar activity, but some of the most intense events happen around the minimum in the solar activity cycle. There are very few monitoring stations (on the ground or in space) that can make the necessary measurements. The physics behind these events is not well known, and it isn't well known what kind of monitoring equipment is best (visible imagers, ultraviolet imagers, magnetographs, etc.).

Aurorae aren't the only things "regular" folk see. Six million people in Quebec lost power because of a solar storm. Commercial and military institutions lose satellites fairly frequently due to solar storms. Most of the people in the US lost pager service for this reason.

These issues are a high priority for NASA, NOAA, and the Air Force. Lots of good data have come from SOHO, WIND, and ACE, but these are either nearing the end of their lives or they are done. STEREO should provide the next round of very good data. Just about any spacecraft that measures the solar wind contributes to understanding space weather, and some missions are designed with that as their primary mission. There are also ground-based programs that make very valuable observations. A good page with some space missions can be found here.

Re:Predictability

[hatchet]

Flares can be "predicted" easily. Note that with "solar telescopes" like SOHO satellite or other earth based telescopes we can see flares form. Light needs about 8minutes to reach earth. But flares (or better.. high energy solar particles) reach earth in 24-48 hours. This gives enough time to inform people.
Earth weather? They can't even predict exact weather for tomorrow. (mostly sunny with possibility of rain) does such forecast really help us?

Re:Predictability

[hubie]

Flares are not "predicted" easily. The physics is not well understood, and the observational resolution (e.g., from magnetographs) is not good enough to predict well where or when a flare will pop up. In any event, geomagnetic storms are not caused by flares but mostly by Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that hit the Earth. Some flares result in CMEs and some do not. The CMEs that affect us are the ones that hit us, but not all CMEs hit us. Spacecraft like SOHO might see a flare eruption, but they cannot reliably tell if the CME is heading towards or away from Earth. The best candidates seem to be what they call "halo events." One of the big problems with CMEs is that they are very hard to detect because the amount of light they give off is millions of times less intense than then background light from the Sun.

We also get hit by CMEs that are caused by "backside events," which are flares or other disturbances that erupt behind the limb of the Sun and we didn't see them occur. STEREO is supposed to help there.

One researcher in the field of solar weather forecasting put the maturity level of space weather forecasting 50 years behind that of terrestrial weather forecasting. That was the state in 2000 and not much has improved since. The biggest difference is that for Earth weather forecasting we have continuous global weather observations on both the ground and from space. There is only a tiny fraction of coverage for space weather, and as I mentioned in my first post it still isn't clear what kinds of instruments are sufficient.

Good information resources on space weather can be found at the Space Environment Center at NOAA's web site. They have a nice education page on space weather. For a look into what the space weather field priorities are, one place to start is the Living With A Star program page.

BOFH Excuse page?

[lorcha]

Intense solar particle emissions hit the earth's ionosphere bringing large electrical fields with them.

Is it just me, or did they get that from the BOFH Excuse list?

Re:BOFH Excuse page?

[s0l0m0n]

Yup.

Used that one on a customer with a 100' unshielded cable hanging between two buildings..

It was true, too.. During the Summer of 2000, I think, big solar storm

My favorite is still fat electrons getting stuck in the pipes.

Or, 'call microsoft' *grin*

josh

Re:uh for heaven's sake

[uncoveror]

But there are atmospheric conditions in outer space. They are mentioned in Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space, and this article. Check it out!

Slashdot effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I was maybe the 5th person to try to view this and I got:

"Ylen Inetjulkaisujärjestelmä: Tietokantavirhe

Oracle error:ORA-01403: no data found
reading page"

Is this Finnish for "404" ? Is it time to upgrade to a 286? Perhaps someone cached this article?

Re:Slashdot effect?

[sraak]

>Ylen Inetjulkaisujärjestelmä: Tietokantavirhe

into english:

FBC Internet Publishing System: Database Error

and the rest of the error you can read, right?
you tried to be funny?

Re:Slashdot effect?

[keitsi69]

Oh, they have moved it to the archive: http://ww2.yle.fi/pls/show/search_common.archivePa ge?p_id=210261&p_ver=1

Ah.

[Bobulusman]

So this is that "Terrible Space Secret" I keep hearing about....

Re:Ah.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

Do you have stairs in your house?

Tim

Re:Ah.

[Anonymous Coward]

noo, you cannot come here go away robot, you are scaring me

I'm glad someone else got that reference....

Re:Ah.

[falzer]

PAK CHOOIE UNF