1

The Space Weather Community

Setting the stage for subsequent sessions, the workshop began with an overview of the space weather enterprise, with particular attention given to the drivers of a rapidly changing landscape of space weather activities throughout the government (Box 1-1). Of particular importance was the impact of the passage of the Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow (PROSWIFT) Act in December 2020.¹

The session began with a keynote address that summarized the proceedings of the Phase I Space Weather Workshop held in 2020 (NASEM 2021). The following four panels each focused on a different aspect of the space weather community: major government agencies involved in space weather research and operations, details about interagency partnerships and collaboration, the user community and operations, and the space weather workforce, with a particular emphasis on workforce diversity. This chapter summarizes the presentations and discussions in each of those four panels.

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¹ Among its key provisions, is the PROSWIFT Act’s delineation of federal agency roles and responsibilities for space weather: The “transition to operations” is addressed by the PROSWIFT Act in part through the creation of the Space Weather Interagency Working Group (SWAG). The SWAG is tasked with developing formal mechanisms to transition space weather research findings, models, and capabilities of NASA, NSF, and the U.S. Geological Survey, and other relevant federal agencies as appropriate, to NOAA and the Department of Defense. The Act also creates a “Government-University-Commercial Roundtable on Space Weather,” hosted by the National Academies, to facilitate communication and knowledge transfer among government participants in the Space Weather Operations, Research, and Mitigation (SWORM) Interagency Working Group, the academic community, and the commercial space weather sector. The PROSWIFT Act also directs NOAA to develop “near real-time coronal mass ejection imagery, solar wind, solar imaging, coronal imagery, and other relevant observations required to provide space weather forecasts.” In addition, it directs NOAA to consider enhancement of its space weather capabilities via “commercial solutions, prize authority, academic partnerships, microsatellites, ground-based instruments, and opportunities to deploy the instrument or instruments as a secondary payload on an upcoming planned launches.” See, U.S. Congress, 2020, PROSWIFT Act: Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow Act, S.881 – 116th Congress (2019-2020), Public Law 116-181, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/881.

AGENCY UPDATES

The Agency Panel provided updates (since the Phase I proceedings) on the priorities and activities of the various government agencies involved in space weather and on the coordination among them. The panelists were Jim Spann, the space weather lead in NASA’s Heliophysics Division; Mangala Sharma, program director for space weather research in the Directorate of Geosciences Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (GEO/AGS) at the National Science Foundation (NSF); and Elsayed Talaat, Director of the Office of Projects, Planning, and Analysis at the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information

Service (NESDIS) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They were asked to address the following four key questions:

• How will we take advantage of the recently established interagency focus on space weather, and what new interfaces may be needed for space weather research and fluent (i.e., smooth and effective) service structure?
• What are the new communities that we need to engage in space weather, and what are the mechanisms to involve them?
• What should the education of next-generation space weather scientists and forecasters look like?
• What should the engineers in different fields know about space weather?

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

In the first presentation, Spann described NASA’s role in space weather. He noted that NASA is setting up a dedicated Space Weather Program within its Heliophysics Division, which will modify how the agency internally funds space weather activities. Spann described NASA’s role in the space weather enterprise as advancing research by providing unique, significant, and exploratory data streams for research building on theory, modeling, and data analysis as well as for operations making use of the data. The agency’s programs are designed to explore observing techniques, models, and data analysis so that once the potential value of a new capability to space weather services has been demonstrated, that capability can become a candidate for transition to operations. Thus, he said, NASA and its Heliophysics Division is “uniquely poised to support the needs of the national and international space weather enterprise.” The new NASA Space Weather Program is intended as a “national resource to unify space weather research and drive our understanding of its risks, impacts, and mechanisms.”

NASA has established four pillars (Figure 1-1) that support space weather within the Heliophysics Division: Investigation, Transition, Exploration, and Application. Each of these pillars has a particular

theme describing its goals. The Investigation pillar represents the fundamental scientific investigations that NASA supports with the goal of providing a coordinated solar system research approach to observing and modeling space weather. The Transition pillar supports operational partners by transitioning the innovative science developed through research into operational (space weather) capabilities. The Exploration pillar involves safe exploration of the solar system, through both human and robotic means, including plans for the return of crewed missions to the Moon and subsequently to Mars. The Heliophysics Division’s role in Exploration is to provide support through understanding of the space environment. Finally, the new, less mature, Applications pillar supports new tools with a long-term aim to help mitigate space weather impacts.

The NASA Space Weather Program has a number of current and planned activities that will contribute to the four pillars. For example, in support of Exploration, the HERMES (Heliophysics Environmental and Radiation Measurement Experiment Suite) instrument package to be placed on the lunar-orbiting Gateway will make space weather measurements in support of lunar operations, and demonstrate technologies needed to conduct human missions to Mars. To support the Investigation and Transition pillars, space weather R2O2R (research-to-operations/operations-to-research) grants, space weather centers of excellence, and Small Business Innovative Research opportunities will fund targeted research to develop applications and respond to operational needs. The Heliophysics System Observatory observations made for basic and applications-focused research can, in some cases, provide real-time support for operational space weather applications. NASA also funded the recently completed Space Weather Gap Analysis (NASA 2021), which identified high-priority observations that are at risk of being decommissioned, not currently available, or that are needed to significantly advance space weather forecasting and nowcasting capabilities.

National Science Foundation

Sharma stated that, consistent with the broader NSF missions, the agency’s space weather agenda is focused on fundamental science with broader impacts, on the infrastructure needed to achieve the scientific goals, and on the people engaged in the science. Furthermore, the space weather–related activities contribute to NSF’s goals to empower science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent to fully participate in science and engineering and to create new knowledge and to translate that knowledge into solutions for the benefit of society.

Space weather research at NSF is supported by multiple programs. Within the Directorate of Geosciences, the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences supports the geospace research programs (e.g., Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions [CEDAR]; Geospace Environment Modeling [GEM]; and Solar, Heliospheric, and Interplanetary Environment [SHINE]) and facilities such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Within the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, the Division of Astronomical Sciences supports astronomy and astrophysical research, and the National Solar Observatory facility. The Division of Physics supports plasma physics research relevant to Heliophysics.

Recognizing space weather as a grand challenge in geosciences, Sharma described NSF’s recently launched research opportunity, Advancing National Space Weather Expertise and Research toward Societal Resiliency (ANSWERS). This program seeks to develop a deep and transformative understanding of the dynamic, integrated Sun–Earth system and the solar and terrestrial drivers of space weather, as well as to link geospace observers, theorists, modelers, software developers, laboratory experimenters, STEM educators, and space weather policy experts together.

Development of the space science workforce is an important priority to NSF. To that end, NSF has made a number of early-career faculty development awards covering a wide range of disciplines relevant to space weather, from the dynamics of the solar corona to satellite debris in low Earth orbit.

NSF supports a wide network of observing facilities, which cover the full breadth of the Sun–Earth domain. The facility suite includes solar telescopes, magnetometer networks, coherent and incoherent radars, a neutron monitor network, and networks of citizen-science measurements. Although the NSF facilities are primarily ground-based, NSF also supports balloon-based instrumentation, CubeSats, and public–private partnerships within the space industry, such as the Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment (AMPERE). NSF is also starting to focus more heavily on data infrastructure needs (Figure 1-2).

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

NOAA’s space weather activities as described by Talaat are based on the agency’s charter, which calls for NOAA to build capacity to advance space weather policy, to accelerate growth in NOAA space weather services, and to apply an integrative and collaborative approach between space weather research and operations. This charter is complementary to those of NASA and the NSF. As mentioned above, space weather policy activities include the implementation of the National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan and responding to the actions detailed in the PROSWIFT Act. Improving space weather services involves sustaining fundamental observations, providing accurate models and forecast products, transitioning scientific and technological advances into operations, and supporting the private sector to fill data and technology gaps and to provide value-added services.

In order to improve services and address user needs, NOAA advances a space weather paradigm that is parallel to the terrestrial weather one, Talaat said. The previous paradigm relied heavily on research observations, lacked a formal framework for community input on R2O2R efforts, and emphasized global geomagnetic activity indices as indicators of space weather state. The new paradigm combines the establishment of dedicated operational observing systems with modeling and service improvements to provide the forecasts, warnings, and data necessary to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure. The formal R2O2R Framework described in the next section will incorporate contributions from industry, government agencies, and academic partners to test and evaluate emerging science, accelerate the transition of new capabilities to operations, and enable the improvement and maintenance of existing operational models. Regional and local specifications and forecasts tailored to the needs of decision-makers within the industries will augment global indices.

NOAA currently uses a suite of operational numerical models covering the Sun–Earth system, and these capabilities will be further enhanced through R2O2R efforts. Models predicting the solar wind and the propagation of coronal mass ejections have been operational since 2011 and were upgraded in 2019. The Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) Geospace model used to predict regional geomagnetic activity has been operational since 2016 and was upgraded in 2021. A model for the regional electric fields and associated currents within electric power grids has been operational since 2020, and the coupled Whole Atmosphere Model–Ionosphere Plasmasphere Exosphere (WAM-IPE) model became operational in 2021. Operational models now also provide advisories for civil aviation, including a human radiation dose specification model. In addition, NASA and NOAA recently signed an interagency agreement on NOAA providing space radiation environment support for all human spaceflight activities. This continues NOAA’s long-time support for NASA’s crewed space activities, including 24/7 space weather forecasts and alerts for the International Space Station, Artemis, Lunar missions, Lunar surface operations, and future Mars missions.

The goal of NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) is to provide an integrated, digital understanding of Earth’s environment in a way that can evolve rapidly to address changing user needs. This is accomplished by combining NOAA’s assets with those of partners. Recently, space weather has been elevated to a third pillar in NOAA’s observing infrastructure, along with geostationary and low Earth orbit systems, and NESDIS is working to integrate capabilities with its national and international partners. Space weather conditions will be monitored at the L1 Lagrange point, geostationary orbit, and low Earth orbit, and, potentially, at the L5 Lagrange point in the future. A set of common ground data services will verify, calibrate, and fuse data into improved products and services.

NOAA has established a program of record that identifies the essential observations that must continuously be obtained (see Figure 1-3). These include observations of the Sun, the solar wind, the geostationary environment, and the ionosphere, which are all in operational use today. An essential mission for maintaining the continuity of solar and solar wind measurements is the Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1). This mission is currently in development, and the spacecraft and instrument critical design reviews were recently completed. The SWFO-L1, whose launch is planned for February 2025, will carry a compact coronagraph to provide operational coronal images that are now obtained from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) research mission launched in 1995. The compact coronagraph will also be included on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-U) spacecraft to be launched in 2024. In addition, GOES-T, which was successfully launched on March 1, 2022 (renamed GOES-18 upon becoming operational), carries the standard set of space weather instruments similar to those onboard GOES-16 and -17, and will replace GOES-17 in January 2023. Another recent achievement was to reduce the latency of ionospheric data obtained from the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC-2) mission to under 30 minutes (Weiss et al. 2022). These measurements of the ionospheric total electron content have been acquired since 2019, and are being used in NOAA’s operational model for the ionosphere.

R2O2R support at NOAA includes multi-agency coordination with its Space Weather Prediction Testbed and the interagency Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC). A major upcoming exercise will be focused on understanding the needs of the aviation community and identifying steps for the improvement of targeted operational services.

INTERAGENCY PARTNERSHIPS: NEW WAYS OF WORKING

The Interagency Partnerships Panel examined the issues that arise when multiple organizations are responsible for space weather and, in particular, ways to improve coordination and communication across these agencies. The four panelists were Jinni Meehan, a program manager of NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS); Dan Moses, a program scientist in NASA’s Heliophysics Division; Tammy Dickinson, the president of Science Matters Inc.; and Sage Andorka, a lead systems engineer for the U.S. Space Force. The panel was asked to address the same four key questions as the previous panel.

The panelists provided updates on the different national programs involving space weather and on the current priorities for addressing space weather challenges. As Meehan explained, the central strategy of the U.S. national space weather effort (NSW-SAP) was put in place in 2019, thereby superseding the 2015 strategy and action plan documents. Space weather activities are overseen by the Space Weather Operations, Research, and Mitigation (SWORM) Subcommittee, an interagency working group that is organized under the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Committee on Homeland and National Security, under the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

The PROSWIFT Act signed on October 21, 2020, codified SWORM into law. It also codified the policy of the United States to prepare and protect against the societal and economic impacts of space weather. It established an interagency working group (IWG) to coordinate executive branch actions to improve

understanding and prediction of space weather phenomena, and it also established a Space Weather Advisory Group (SWAG) (NOAA 2021) to receive advice from academia, the commercial sector, and space weather end users. Meehan noted that the PROSWIFT Act does not authorize agency funding, but rather serves as a means to prioritize agency efforts.

In March 2022, just a few weeks before the workshop, OSTP released the Space Weather Research-to-Operations and Operations-to-Research Framework (Executive Office of the President 2022) to the public. The framework was developed in response to one of the National Space Weather actions, and it provides a formal interagency structure aimed at ensuring an effective space weather R2O2R process. The SWORM Subcommittee is now in the process of updating the 2019 National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan with priorities including the R2O2R Framework (Figure 1-4), benchmarks, activity scales, hazard mapping, human exploration and aviation fields, human resources through the Solar System Ambassador program, and the continuity of availability of satellite observations. However, many of these plans still lack concrete implementation strategies.

Moses reviewed NASA’s role in space weather, noting the various executive (e.g., NSW-SAP) and legislative (e.g., the PROSWIFT Act) mandates that direct the agency to address space weather research and applications. NASA’s Heliophysics Division works as the research arm of the U.S. space weather effort, he said, and, in particular, it coordinates the National Space Weather Action Plan with various other agencies, including NOAA, NSF, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.

Dickinson introduced the Space Weather Advisory Group (SWAG) put in place by the PROSWIFT Act. The SWAG, chaired by Dickinson, has 15 members appointed by SWORM, five each from academia, commercial space weather, and end-user communities. The group is an important new asset for the SWORM Subcommittee, she said, as it gets more direct advice from the commercial sector on space weather priorities. The SWAG’s first task, which is now being addressed, is to conduct a user needs survey concerning space weather products. This survey will address 10 different sectors (the electric power grid, satellites, aviation, human space flight, etc.), and develop sector-specific surveys for each of them.

In addition to the SWAG, two other space weather–related groups have been recently formed: the Space Weather Roundtable2 of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies), which was also required by the PROSWIFT Act, and the NASA Space Weather Council, which is a subgroup of the Heliophysics Advisory Committee. These two entities and the SWAG will support communication and coordination of space weather efforts among the agencies.

Andorka offered a broad overview of the U.S. Space Force interests in space weather, including opportunities for collaboration. The Department of Defense space weather program has recently been reorganized within the U.S. Space Force under Space Domain Awareness. Because of its vital importance for space warfighters, the Space Force is developing the Space Domain Awareness Environmental Toolkit for Defense (SET4D; see Andorka et al. 2021), which will use space weather information together with information about space warfighter missions. The goal of this effort is to create a holistic picture of the operational environment, including specific system impacts. SET4D development will require an integrated software suite consisting of data, models, and applications.

In support of the space domain awareness efforts, the Space Force is establishing a number of independent interagency agreements, which will cover data sharing between agencies, synchronizing data stores, establishing and using open architectures, and enabling all agencies to participate in capability improvements. An important interagency collaboration under discussion is the one involving NASA and NOAA on commercial space traffic management. Collaborations are also being pursued between commercial entities and academia to feed operational needs into the research environment (O2R).

USER COMMUNITY AND OPERATIONS

The next panel covered the space weather user community and operations. The five panelists were Hazel Bain, a research scientist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) and the University of Colorado; Michele Cash, a research section lead at SWPC; Mark Olson, a senior engineer and manager at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation; Michael Stills, a former director of flight dispatch at United Airlines; and Scott Leonard, the technical director at NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce. The panelists were asked to address three key questions:

• What new observations, models, or other assets are needed to supply high-quality services?
• How do we educate the user community to be able to demand new services making use of novel observations and models?
• Where are the competence gaps in the community?

The speakers focused on the much-needed ongoing efforts to transition research capabilities to operations, identifying a subset of key user needs. The government agencies’ commitment to improving operational services will be accomplished by developing and transitioning new or updated space weather capabilities in partnership between academia and commercial enterprises. As described in the R2O2R Framework document (see the

previous subsection), operational services will be improved by an efficient transitioning of capabilities from research to operations; by engagement of forecasters and other operators in evaluation, testing, and feedback; and by using specific operational experiments to determine the efficiency and impact of the new capabilities.

2 See National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2022, “Space Weather Roundtable,” https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/space-weather-roundtable.

Bain said that an important component in improving current operational models is to establish and communicate their current baseline capabilities. Such benchmarking will enable the research community to assess the merits of new capabilities as well as enable the operational agencies to prioritize transition activities. Examples include the recent validation of solar proton forecasts, and quantification of the impact of spatially distributed data in an ionospheric disturbance model.

In addition to transitioning research algorithms and models into operations, Bain also discussed the need to use research observations in operations. As the operational models rely on increasing amounts of research data, their availability for operations must be ensured. For example, the research-focused global neutron monitoring network that is used as an input to operational radiation models for the aviation industry has no guarantee for long-term continuity of its operations.

Cash expanded on Bain’s presentation, providing detail on the research-to-operations (R2O) process and on what is needed to transform research results into reliable operations. Detailing a formal R2O approach, she described a series of readiness levels (RLs) used to indicate the maturity of a given capability, and the process to advance from lower readiness levels to higher, more operational, readiness levels (Figure 1-5). The first space weather proving ground being established under the R2O2R Framework is the Architecture for Collaborative Evaluation hosted at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The first space weather testbed is being established at NOAA’s SWPC.

NOAA has a long history of using testbed experiments to facilitate the transition of research capabilities into operations, and the first space weather testbed will conduct its initial experiment in September 2022. These experiments bring together forecasters, users, regulators, internal and external researchers, and federal partners to explore current capabilities, needs, and gaps in the existing space weather services. Such experiments support emerging concepts, demonstrate new technologies, and provide feedback to developers.

Although not all space weather user needs could be comprehensively discussed in the workshop, representatives from the electric power and aviation industries provided perspectives on how space weather information is used and the types of information that can improve the resiliency of these industries. The industry representatives said that the collaborative engagement between industry, researchers, and service providers has been essential for the progress.

Olson began with a brief description of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), describing its tasks of developing and enforcing standards for the North American electrical grid and minimizing the likelihood of grid failures and blackouts. In particular, two mandatory reliability standards have been implemented to reduce the risks associated with geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs): First, grid operators must have procedures to mitigate impacts during GMD events, and second, grid planners and asset owners must assess and design the system to mitigate a rare, high-intensity event with probability of occurrence once in 100 years.

The electric power industry has identified a number of research efforts that would make space weather information more actionable. One key need is to have more granularity to the storm intensity scales. The highest level of geomagnetic activity, characterized by a NOAA G-scale of 5, covers a broad range of disturbance magnitudes. The smaller G5 storms may have only minor impacts on the electrical grid, whereas strong G5 storms may cause major impacts. However, as these events are so rare, developing such scales will need to rely on more research to develop models that can cover such conditions. Further needs include longer forecast lead times, more accurate determination of the geographic location and spatial extent of the events, and better uncertainty and confidence estimates.

Improving the electric power grid design and architecture and addressing the vulnerabilities of the current grid requires knowledge of the details of the space weather disturbance (peak magnitude and location of severe events), of the ground geoelectric properties (the geoelectric field spatial and temporal granularity, the 3D structure of the ground conductivity), as well as further research to get improved estimates of induced currents in regions with complex conductivity distributions. NERC has initiated a data collection program to support geomagnetically induced current (GIC) model validation. Data on induced currents and magnetic field variability have been collected for strong events since May 2013 and will be made available through a public portal beginning in mid-2022.

The North American electric industry recognizes the benefits from a strong collaboration between the space weather community and industrial stakeholders, which has facilitated both R2O and O2R processes. This collaboration has been facilitated by regular information-exchange meetings involving industry representatives, researchers, and service providers.

Stills said that the aviation industry’s major focus is on polar routes where U.S. (and other) carriers are required to monitor space weather and to have a plan for increased energetic particle doses. For example, United Airlines has flown polar routes since the year 2000 and has had numerous occasions when space weather mitigation has altered flight routes or altitudes. The airline industry’s desire to directly relate the environmental conditions along a route to the doses affecting the aircraft and its passengers could be achieved by collecting data during flights and making them available for model validation (see a later discussion on collection and sharing of data from commercial providers). Better data and models to support decision making would avoid flight planners’ overreaction to space weather warnings. As is the case for most space weather users, forecast lead time is important for the airline industry: A 72-hour lead time would allow the airlines to reschedule both passengers and cargo. However, shorter lead-time warnings are also useful, as they indicate when communication integrity may be affected. Since U.S. carriers are

required to always maintain communication with aircraft, potentially affected aircraft need to get warnings about space weather communication hazards in a timely manner.

Stills stressed education as an important element in improving the aviation industry’s response to space weather. Both Airlines for America and NOAA have been involved in providing baseline education to various carriers. Expanding such efforts to air navigation services providers, including oceanic air traffic controllers, could serve to establish common protocols for space weather events. In addition, a standard knowledge package should be distributed throughout the airline industry to ensure that consistent procedures are followed by all carriers.

Leonard described the Open-Architecture Data Repository (OADR), a prototype environment for R2O established at NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce (Figure 1-6). The OADR was developed in partnership with industry, government, and academia in response to Space Policy Directive-3, which includes the mandate to build an operational system to provide basic space situational awareness (SSA, a subset of space domain awareness) information, primarily for collision avoidance and space traffic management of satellites in low Earth orbit. The proving ground will be used to expand and mature SSA stakeholder and system requirements, support ongoing research and experimentation, and serve as a development environment for further operational applications and algorithms.

The OADR architecture is cloud based and scalable to accommodate the increased number of satellites being launched in the near future, Leonard said. The modular design will be adaptable to support new technologies, advanced algorithms, and diverse data sets, including space weather measurements as well as satellite orbit information. A priority is to promote data sharing and collaboration across the U.S. and international space weather communities.

DIVERSITY IN WORKFORCE

The session’s final panel dealt with diversity in the space sciences workforce. The three panelists were Frances Bagenal of the University of Colorado, MacArthur Jones of the Naval Research Laboratory, and Edward Gonzalez of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The panelists were asked to address three key questions:

• What is the current state of the demographics within the space sciences workforce?
• What are the reasons for the lack of diversity in the geosciences?
• When we have a diverse workforce, how do we retain it?

In response, the panel discussed various problems and potential solutions related to equity and diversity.

Bagenal began by offering details on the demographics of the physics workforce (Figure 1-7). A substantial amount of information has been obtained through workforce surveys compiled by the statistical division of the American Institute of Physics (AIP).³ Some of the surveys have been done in association with recent decadal surveys, including the astrophysics and planetary decadal surveys. Information has also been obtained from surveys conducted by the National Science Foundation (NSF 2017) and surveys using email lists from the American Geophysical Union, the American Astronomical Society, and the Space Weather Workshop (Moldwin and Morrow 2021).

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³ See American Institute of Physics, 2022, “Statistical Research Center,” https://www.aip.org/statistics.

The dominant situation shown in all space science disciplines is that the workforce is predominantly white and male. Female representation has been slowly catching up, but non-white racial groups remain severely underrepresented.

Undergraduate education is a major barrier to careers in STEM, Bagenal said. It has been known for decades that a large number of students who begin taking math and physics in a university will eventually drop that major, with only about 20 percent of all math and physics undergraduate majors persisting to graduation, and this is particularly prevalent among underrepresented populations (Bradforth et al. 2015; Seymour and Hunter 2019). First-year mathematics and physics courses are especially important for retaining students in the sciences.

On the topic of doctoral degrees in physics, Bagenal emphasized two facts that have persisted over several decades: First, the number of Latino/Hispanic and African American Ph.D.s is tiny,⁴ and, second, the numbers of U.S. and non-U.S. physics Ph.D.s are roughly equal. Even if the global talent pool is large and attractive to U.S. universities, Bagenal questioned the strategy of so strongly relying on foreign students to provide the United States with a highly educated workforce. She urged the United States to improve its domestic pipeline to prepare for a possible decrease in the number of foreign students coming to the United States.

A similar demographic situation is seen in surveys of the scientists submitting research proposals to NASA collected through online personal profiles solicited at the time of proposal submission (Barbier and Wilson 2021). Although the data are somewhat limited, the share of women submitting proposals is ~20 percent, and the Latino/Hispanic and African American populations are severely underrepresented. The numbers are similar across all divisions within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Bagenal made one recommendation to expand and improve the demographics data: it is important, she said, that the upcoming Heliophysics Decadal Survey include a panel on the state of the profession. Along these lines, the recent Decadal Survey for Astronomy and Astrophysics stressed that collecting, evaluating, and acting on demographic data was one of its seven essential goals. The 2011 AIP Solar, Space, and Upper Atmospheric Physicists Survey should be used as a benchmark point, and Bagenal suggested that the Heliophysics Decadal Survey should consider employing the AIP to conduct a demographics survey. Data from proposals submitted to NASA need to improve, and these data should be combined with similar data from NSF.⁵

Jones pointed out that it is also essential that there is consistency among the data being collected by various organizations. For example, demographic information recently collected by the CEDAR community was compiled for various career stages: undergraduate, graduate, early-career, mid-career, and senior-career, while some other NSF surveys have focused solely on one group (e.g., postdoctoral researchers), making apples-to-apples comparisons difficult.

Jones spoke about the Significant Opportunities for Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS) undergraduate-to-graduate bridge program, which strives to get historically underrepresented groups involved in geosciences, especially atmospheric sciences. This program, centered at the NCAR, recognizes the many reasons for the current lack of diversity: Lack of awareness of career opportunities; lack of mathematics and science preparation in underserved secondary schools; feelings of isolation, stereotype threat, and imposter syndrome; implicit biases, including those in recommendation letters; lack of representation and a sense of belonging; and the accumulation of many disadvantages, including systemic racism.

Applicants to the SOARS program reflect some of the situations that can be responsible for the low participation rate of the historically underrepresented groups in the atmospheric and space sciences: Applicants may have majors that are not fully aligned with traditional atmospheric science degrees, or they may have changes or interruptions during their academic pathways. Some have lower GPAs, especially in their first year of college, and they may have variable—and perhaps biased—letters of recommendation.

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⁴ Ibid.

⁵ See also NASEM (2022).

Some of these students might be working while in school to support themselves or their families. Thus, asking applicants about their situations can help mentors to understand their unique situation and potential as well as to better target actions to address underrepresentation.

Expanding the recruitment base to minority-serving institutions, tribal colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, and various national conferences is also key to mitigating underrepresentation. Furthermore, it is important to encourage a wider population to take science courses, which can help diversify the workforce at all career paths within and outside academia.

Retention is a key consideration. Job applicants, students, and employees desire an inclusive culture. Humans have a need for a sense of belonging created by seeing people like them throughout the organization; they want to feel included and listened to; and they want to have active employee resource groups, affinity groups, and effective mentoring programs available to them. Such groups can serve as forums to raise the issues that are important to everyone.

As examples of effective retention programs, Gonzalez mentioned the employee resource and affinity groups at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Numerous resource groups are active among the Latino/Hispanic employees, Native Americans, African Americans, members of the LGBTQ+ community, Asians, veterans, and so forth. Each group includes champions at the leadership level who attend the meetings, hear the issues and suggestions, and then act on them.

Mentorships and apprenticeships are also effective means to strengthen diversity, Gonzalez said, adding that NASA Goddard offers a good example by providing strong mentoring at multiple levels within the organization. Beyond NASA, the American Geophysical Union also has a mentoring program called 360. Often the most effective approach is what might be called “apprenticeships,” which involve long-term, multi-year partnerships (e.g., taking students from high school through college and graduate school and into their professions).

REFERENCES