Severe Space Weather Events Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts: A Workshop Report (2008) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix C: Abstracts Prepared by Workshop Panelists
Appendix C: Abstracts Prepared by Workshop Panelists
Pages 98-124
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From page 98... ...
that damage the ground-based systems. • Precision location made possible by GPS satellites is now becoming a ubiquitous feature embedded in many commercial products (automobile navigations systems, cell phones, dog collars)
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Improvements are required both in understanding the precursors to major solar events and in the type and resolution of the data necessary to reveal the signatures of those precursors. Finally, Lockheed Martin depends on comprehensive space weather data products to support post-anomaly investigations.
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Green, NASA The great geomagnetic storm of 1859 is really composed of two closely spaced massive worldwide auroral events. The first event began on August 28 and the second began on September 2.
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It illustrates the complexity of the natural space environment in the context of low Earth orbit (LEO) , medium Earth orbit (MEO)
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These few examples highlight the importance of accurate knowledge of the current and predicted state of the natural space environment on military operations. Conclusion Space weather has impacts on both terrestrial and space technological systems and services used by the military.
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In particular, it has provided seedcorn funding for programmatic studies and for a pilot project on space weather services. These have been very successful and have played a huge part in building the present European space weather community.
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Hegarty, The MITRE Corporation The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite navigation system operated by the United States that includes a constellation of nominally 24 satellites in medium Earth orbit with an approximate altitude of 20,000 km.
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Kappenman, Metatech Corporation Severe space weather events have the potential to pose operational threats to the North American electric power grid; both contemporary experience and analytical work support this general conclusion. A large geomagnetic storm on March 13-14, 1989, triggered a blackout of the Quebec power grid.
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From page 106... ...
Impulsive geomagnetic field disturbances are an important aspect of the geomagnetic storm environment for electric power grids and other ground-based infrastructures that can be affected by GIC. Significant power grid impacts in present day networks have been observed at relatively low levels of intensity; for example, the Quebec grid blackout during the March 13-14, 1989, storm occurred at a peak intensity of 480 nT/min, and permanent damage to large power transformers has occurred at even lower intensity levels.
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is responsible for flying space-based DOD space weather sensors, and Air Force weather procures and operates ground-based space weather sensors and operational space weather models. The Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA)
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We are also increasing our investment to transition current space weather modeling capabilities into operations. AFSPC is working on replacing capabilities lost on NPOESS as well as helping to sample the rest of the space environment.
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Assessment of Risk The operators of the North American power grid constantly review and analyze the potential risks associated with space weather events. Grid operators have access to space weather forecasts, monitor voltages and ground currents in real time, and have mitigating procedures in place.
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The communities most affected by severe space weather all face this situation. How might we think about designing for severe space weather events?
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However, often such information is also not available. In summary, detailed information on space weather forecast data incorporated into a model that correlates the data with the characteristics of the North American bulk power grid is critical to ensure that the system operator has adequate time to posture the system.
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At midlatitudes TEC density is reasonably well behaved except during strong solar weather events. At equatorial latitudes small quickly moving holes of low TEC and significant levels of scintillation can be observed even under benign solar weather.
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The first of 12 IIF satellites will be launched in mid-2009. Civilian use of L5 will mitigate the problems with the Klobuchar and SBAS thin shell models.
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However, high-rate and realtime GPS analysis is rapidly improving in detecting seismic surface waves and co-seismic displacement. ,, Brief or partial loss of tracking due to space weather during a critical event could certainly degrade applications with societal and economic impacts, such as tsunami warning systems. The IGS historical dataset is an openly available archive that can be used to evaluate sensitivity to past space weather events; however, care must be taken when using historical data to allow for the improvement over time of the quality of equipment in the network and the density of the network.
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Current Space Weather Services Infrastructure William Murtagh, NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) monitors, measures, and specifies the space environment and provides timely and accurate operational space weather forecasts, warnings, alerts, and data to end users in the United States and around the world. The program develops space weather observational requirements for NOAA's sensors, ingests and processes NOAA's (and others')
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From page 116... ...
If airborne survey data, or marine seismic data, are useless or poor because of solar activity, the financial impacts are significant, with costs in the $50,000 to $1 million range. Primary users of SWPC data include the following: • Electric power grid operators use geomagnetic storm detection and warning systems to maximize power grid stability and to mitigate power grid component damage and large-scale blackouts.
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Most relevant space environment phenomena appear to have finite upper limits, but quantitative knowledge of those limits is often poor due to a relatively short history of observations. The extreme value distribution describes the distribution of largest values taken from multiple independent sample sets, where H gives the probability that any sample maximum will be larger than x.
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From page 118... ...
Second, promote long-term space environment observation or monitoring as a legitimate scientific objective for NASA; currently, only NSF and NOAA seem to be allowed to do this, while NASA has historically flown the most capable sensors. Given the longer operational life of non-NASA missions, it may be most cost-effective for NASA to exploit more missions of opportunity on operational vehicles.
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2007. Long-term occurrence probabilities of intense geomagnetic storm events.
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VBS users can augment or replace the ionosphere delays calculated by the Klobuchar model with actual delay calculations from nearby stations. Further, a user with a dual-frequency receiver can actually use ionosphere-free measurements to calculate a position.
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In 2001 the Rumsfeld Commission warned us of the possibility of a "space Pearl Harbor"an attack on our space assets by an adversary that would leave us vulnerable. We feel there is also a real and serious threat to our space assets from major space weather events.
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The desire to exploit our spatial environment propelled the engineering community to produce increasingly smaller electronics without, at first, any concrete knowledge of the harshness of the space environment. While solar activity was very high during the 19th solar cycle (1954-1965)
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Current members of the HPGO include ACE and STEREO, which have the added feature of real-time data beacons that broadcast current space environment data for use by the space environment reporting and prediction centers at NOAA, USAF, and others. Also near-real-time data from SOHO provide valuable information on current solar activity and warnings of solar energetic particles.
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The Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder has created on its website the tab "Space Weather for Aviation Service Providers," which focuses on the information pertinent to airline operations. In conjunction with alerts based on the NOAA space weather scales, the aviation tab provides a quick snapshot of current space weather.
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