When it comes to the Sun, one could recall that line sung by Elvis: “A churning urn of burning funk.”
But now space weather forecasters have a new tool to issue a one-to-four day advance warning of high speed streams of solar plasma and Earth-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from our Sun.
Scientists have unveiled the first large-scale, physics-based space weather model – one that is now transitioning into operation. The cutting-edge work was detailed at the annual American Meteorological Society meeting held this week in Seattle, Washington.
The new capability stems from research work at Boston University-led Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM).
CISM is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Center made up of 11 member institutions.
That partnership also includes NASA’s Community Coordinated Modeling Center.
“It’s very exciting to pioneer a path from research to operations in space weather,” said scientist Jeffrey Hughes of Boston University, CISM’s director. “The science is having a real impact on the practical problem of predicting when ‘solar storms’ will affect us here on Earth,” he said in a press statement.
In our rapidly growing society so dependent upon all forms of high-tech communications technology, better charting of solar activity has become increasingly important.
The development comes in response to the growing critical need to protect the global communications infrastructure and other sensitive technologies from severe space weather disruptions.
Advance warning models have important applications in understanding the complex space environment, developing space weather specifications and forecasts, and designing advanced tools for teaching, Hughes added.
The CISM space weather modeling effort also benefited from contributions by the National Weather Service; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Space Weather Prediction Center, NSF’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences; the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, as well as George Mason University.
By Leonard David