# Presentation: 012320

## Space Weather

- Joachim Raeder
- Space Science Center & Physics Department
- Many thanks to Howard Singer (NOAA/SEC) for much of the material

## SPACE WEATHER, STORMS IN SPACE, AND THE AURORA

## SPACE WEATHER, STORMS IN SPACE, AND THE AURORA

**SPACE WEATHER, STORMS IN SPACE, AND THE AURORA**

## SPACE WEATHER, STORMS IN SPACE, AND THE AURORA

**SPACE WEATHER, STORMS IN SPACE, AND THE AURORA**

## SPACE WEATHER, STORMS IN SPACE, AND THE AURORA

**SPACE WEATHER, STORMS IN SPACE, AND THE AURORA**

## SPACE WEATHER, STORMS IN SPACE, AND THE AURORA

**SPACE WEATHER, STORMS IN SPACE, AND THE AURORA**

## Geomagnetic Storm Effects on Telegraph Operations - September 3, 1859

***Boston (to Portland operator*****).--"Please cut off your battery entirely from the line for fifteen minutes."**
***Portland*****.--"Will do so.  It is now disconnected."**
***Boston.*****--"Mine is also disconnected and we are working with the auroral current.  How do you receive my writing?"**
***Portland*****.--"Better than with our batteries on.  Current comes and goes gradually."**
***Boston.*****--"My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without batteries, as the aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries alternately, making the current too strong at times for our relay magnets.  Suppose we work without batteries while we are affected by this trouble?"**
***Portland*****.--"Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?"**
**Boston.--"Yes. Go ahead."**

**(Annual of Scientific Discovery, ed. by D.A. Wells, Boston, Gould and **
**Lincoln, p414, 1860; Singer, H.J., Magnetospheric Pulsations, Model**
**and Observations of Standing Alfven Wave Resonances, Thesis, UCLA, 1980.)**

## 1958 Geomagnetic Storm

**On February 9, 1958 an explosive brightening was observed on   ****	****the solar disk at the Sacramento Peak Observatory**
**A notice was radioed to the IGY Data Center on Solar Activity at ****	****the Univ. Colorado’s High Altitude Observatory in Boulder**
**28 hours later one of the greatest magnetic storms on record ****	****began **
** ****It was the 13****th**** most disturbed day from 1932 to the present**
**     **
** ****Effects:**
**             ****Toronto area plunged into temporary darkness**
**	****	****Western Union experienced serious interruptions on****	****its ****	****	****nine North Atlantic telegraph cables**
**	****	****Overseas airlines communications problems**

- Brooks, J., The Subtle Storm, *New Yorker Magazine*, 39-77, Feb. 7, 1959.

## 1958 Geomagnetic Storm and Prophecy

**“****The forecasters at the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory are among the most valorous of prophets, since they are called upon to make their predictions with **_**very little in the way of scientific knowledge**_** to guide them****.”**

- .

**Brooks:  The Subtle Storm, *****New Yorker Magazine*****, 1959.**

**“****In future years, it may be that **_**the Weather Bureau or some Space Age equivalent**_** will warn us of approaching magnetic storms, just as we are now warned of approaching hurricanes,...”**

**“...****nobody knows what kinds of **_**apparatus still undreamed of**_** may come along to be thrown out of whack by their [storms] caprices.”**

## “In the middle of everything is the sun...  For, the sun is not inappropriately called by some the lantern of the universe, by others, its mind, and, its ruler by others still....Thus indeed, as though seated on a royal throne, the sun rules the family of planets revolving around it.”   

**The Sun **

**-- And is the birthplace of Earth’s Space Weather.**

**Nicholas Copernicus, Polish Astronomer (1473 -1543)**

## The Sun 

**Nicholas Copernicus puts it in the center**

## Space Weather:What is it?

- Space Weather:What is it?

- Space Weather refers to conditions in space that can influence the performance and reliability of space-borne and ground-based technological systems and can endanger human life or health.

**Earth**

## Space Weather:What is it?

- Space Weather:What is it?

**Earth**

## Space Weather:What is it?

- Space Weather:What is it?

**Earth**

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## Space Weather:What is it?

- Space Weather:What is it?

**Earth**

**Sun**

**Interplanetary Space:**
**Solar Wind**
** ****Mostly electrons and protons**
** ****very tenuous, a few per cm**3**
** ****very hot, >10****4 ****K**
** ****Magnetic field, a few nano-T**
** ****high velocity, 250-2000 km/sec**
**Disturbances from the sun make shocks and waves in the solar wind**

**Interplanetary Space**

**ACE Satellite**
**At L1**

## A

**Earth**

**Sun**

**Magnetosphere**

**Magnetosphere:  **
**Created by Earth’s magnetic field**
**Deformed by the Solar Wind**
**Particles ( mostly electrons and protons) trapped on magnetic field lines**
**Polar regions are magnetically    open**

**Interplanetary Space**

## A

**Earth**

**Sun**

**Magnetosphere**

**Ionosphere**

**Ionosphere:  **
**Layer of electrons and ions at the top of the atmosphere (100 – 300 km and up)**
**Formed when extreme ultraviolet light from the sun impinges on Earth’s atmosphere**
**Critical in the reflection and transmission of radio waves**

**Interplanetary Space**

**Notes:**
Image

## A

**Earth**

**Sun**

**Magnetosphere**

**Ionosphere**

**Ionosphere:  **
**Layer of electrons at the top of the atmosphere (100 – 300 km and up)**
**Formed when extreme ultraviolet light from the sun impinges on Earth’s atmosphere**
**Critical in the reflection and transmission of radio waves**

**Interplanetary Space**

**Notes:**
Image

## Sun to Earth

**An animation of a space weather event as it starts at the sun and ends up at Earth**
**Solar Flare**
**Light**
**Particles**
**CME**
**Particles and Fields**
**Magnetosphere**
**Deflects the solar wind**
**Energy transfer from solar wind to magnetosphere when interplanetary field opposite direction of Earth’s field**
**Accelerates particles**
**Ionosphere**
**Accelerated particles collide with the atmosphere producing the aurora**

## The Solar Cycles of the Past

**Climatology**
**Sunspots have been recorded for the last 400 years**
**Note that there were no sunspots for nearly 60 years after 1640**
**During the same period, it was very cold in Europe.  This is a period called “The Little Ice Age”**
**Is there a Connection?**

**Solar Maximum**

**Solar**
**Minimum**

##   Solar Minimum – 1996/7        Solar Maximum – 2000/1

**  ****Solar Minimum – 1996/7        Solar Maximum – 2000/1**

- NASA SOHO EIT

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## Geomagnetic Storm EffectsMarch 1989Hydro Quebec Loses Electric Power for 9 Hours

- Geomagnetic Storm EffectsMarch 1989Hydro Quebec Loses Electric Power for 9 Hours

**Transformer Damage**

**Electric Power **
**Transformer**

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## Energetic Particle EffectsHigh Latitude HF Communications

- Polar airline routes loose ground communications
- Alternate routes required
- Uses more fuel
- Flight delays

**Sample of Flights Affected:**
**10/26/00: Lost of HF prior to 75N, re- route off Polar route with Tokyo fuel stop. 15:00 flight now 20:30**
**11/10/00: Due to poor HF, ORD to HKG flown non-polar at 47 minute penalty**
**3/30/01-4/21/01: 25 flights operated on less than optimum polar routes due to HF disturbances resulting in time penalties ranging from 6  to 48 minutes**
**11/25/00: Polar flight re-route at 75N due to Solar Radiation, needed Tokyo fuel stop**
**11/26/00: Operated non-polar at 37 minute penalty due to solar radiation**
**11/27/00: Operated non polar at 32 minute penalty due to solar radiation.**
**11/28/00: Operated non-polar at 35 minute penalty due to solar radiation****	**

**Radio Blackout**
**During **
**Particle Events**

## Cosmic Ray and Solar Proton Radiation Effects on Airline

## Energetic Particles Effects Radiation Hazard

- Energetic Particles Effects Radiation Hazard

- Health Hazards from Energetic Particles
- Humans in space
- Space Shuttle, International Space Station, missions to Mars
- Crew/Passengers in high-flying jets
- Concorde carries radiation detectors
- Exposure limits set for European flight crews

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## Energetic Particle EffectsSpacecraft Systems

- Systems affected
- Spacecraft electronics
- Surface Charging and Discharge
- Single Event Upsets (SEU)
- Deep Dielectric Charging
- USAF attributes 35% of SEU to space weather
- Spacecraft imaging and attitude systems

**Polar Satellite Image Degradation **

**SOHO Satellite Image Degradation **

**Spacecraft Surface Charging (animation) **

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## GEOSYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES

**GEOSYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES**

**CUSTOMER NEEDS**

##  SPACE WEATHER OPERATIONS AT NOAA SEC

** ****SPACE WEATHER OPERATIONS**** AT NOAA SEC**

-  Nation’s official source of
-   Space Weather alerts,
-   warnings, and forecasts
-  Synthesis of space
-    environment data and
-    information
-  Works together with Research
-   and Development to bring
-   new understanding, models,
-   and data into operations

## Space Weather Scales

- 3 Categories
- Geomagnetic Storms
- (CMEs)
- Solar Radiation Storms
- (Particle Events)
- Radio Blackouts
- (Solar Flares)
- http://sec.noaa.gov

- Similar to hurricane (C1-C5)
- and tornado (F1-F5) scales

## Geomagnetic Storm Scales

## NOAA GOES Simultaneous Monitoring of Tropospheric Weather and Space Weather

**August 1998: Hurricane Danielle and a Geomagnetic Storm at the**
**same time!**

**H. J. Singer**
**NOAA/SEC**

## Public Response

- NOAA Space Environment Center Web hits go from 400,000 hits per day to more than 2,000,000 hits per day during times of peak solar activity

## Did you know...Scientists monitor the Earth's magnetic field, the sun and the solar wind to forecast the effect of space weather on our planet.

- http://www.uhaul.com/supergraphic

- Unveiling of U-Haul Truck Supergraphic
- Representing Colorado at Space Weather Week 2001

**Graphic on the side of several thousand U-Haul Trucks**

## How to predict Space Weather

**How to predict Space Weather**

## extras

- Simulation of CME Propagation in the heliosphere

## Brief History of Solar - Terrestrial Discoveries

- 800 B.C. :  First plausible observation of sunspots recorded in      China
- 200 B.C. :  Aristarchos of Samos measures Earth-sun distance (wrong by a factor of 20, but he got the scale).
- 968:  First mention of the solar corona (Leo Diaconus, Byzantine)
- 1128:  First sunspot drawing

-     1185:  First description of a prominence

## 1543:  Copernicus puts the sun into center stage

- 1609:  Kepler finds the laws of planetary motion
- 1610:  First telescopic sunspot observations (Goldsmid, Harriot, Galileo, Scheiner)

- 1645-1715:  sunspots disappear
- 1817:  First solar spectroscopy (Wollaston, Fraunhofer)

## 1830:   Discovery of the sunspot cycle (Heinrich Schwabe)

**1645-1715:  Sunspots vanish, the so-called ****Maunder minimum**
** ****coincides with `little ice age’ in Europe**

**1850:   Wolf defines the sunspot number, the 1755-1766 cycle is named cycle 1**

## 1852:   sunspot cycle is linked to geomagnetic activity (Sabine, Gautier, Wolf)

## 1858:  discovery of sun’s differential rotation (Carrington)

**1880:  Spoerer discovers sunspot migration**

## 1859:   First observation of a flare (Carrington)

## 1860:   First observation of Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)

- Drawing by G. Tempel during the 1860 eclipse

## 1919:  Discovery of the magnetic nature of sunspots and the magnetic cycle (G. E. Hale)

- Sunspot spectrum with Zeeman effect (line splitting due to the magnetic field)

- The sun’s magnetic field switches polarity every sunspot cycle (11 years)

## Now:  Magnetic maps (magnetograms)

- The color shows the magnetic polarity (in/out of the surface)  at the photosphere.  Note the dual polarity of sunspots.

- The sun’s magnetic field switches polarity every sunspot cycle (11 years)

## Now:  SOHO coronograph

## Now:  TRACE

## Now:  TRACE sunspot motion

## Now:  TRACE: developing arcade

## Now:  TRACE: magnetic loops on the limb

## Now:  TRACE: flare and slinky

## When it hits the magnetosphere: substorm

## When it hits the magnetosphere: storm

## Upcoming:  THEMIS

## fin