Abstract
The Scientific Committee on Solar–Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP) of the International Council for Science (ICSU) implemented an international collaborative program called Climate and Weather of the Sun–Earth System (CAWSES), which was active from 2004 to 2008; this was followed by the CAWSES II program during the period of 2009–2013. The CAWSES program was aimed at improving the understanding of the coupled solar–terrestrial system, with special emphasis placed on the short-term (weather) and long-term (climate) variability of solar activities and their effects on and responses of Geospace and Earth’s environment. Following the successful implementation of CAWSES, the CAWSES II program pursued four fundamental questions addressing the way in which the coupled Sun–Earth system operates over time scales ranging from minutes to millennia, namely, (1) What are the solar influences on the Earth’s climate? (2) How will Geospace respond to an altered climate? (3) How does short-term solar variability affect the Geospace environment? and (4) What is the Geospace response to variable inputs from the lower atmosphere? In addition to these four major tasks, the SCOSTEP and CAWSES promoted E-science and informatics activities including the creation of scientific databases and their effective utilization in solar–terrestrial physics research. Capacity building activities were also enhanced during CAWSES II, and this represented an important contribution of SCOSTEP to the world’s solar–terrestrial physics community. This introductory paper provides an overview of CAWSES II activities and serves as a preface to the dedicated review papers summarizing the achievements of the program’s four task groups (TGs) and the E-science component.
Highlights
Recognizing that some key questions on the coupling of the Sun–Earth system still remained unresolved after the completion of the Climate and Weather of the Sun–Earth System (CAWSES) program, four major task groups (TGs) with associated objectives were developed for CAWSES II, as discussed below
In addition to the well-known longitudinal connectivity required between the observer and the solar source, it was found that a stringent latitudinal connectivity may be needed for an solar energetic particles (SEPs) event to be detected at GeV energies
The CAWSES II program has been aimed at studying the coupling processes involved in the solar–terrestrial system, the energy inputs to the Earth, the responses of Geospace, as well as the responses of the middle atmosphere and troposphere to energy inputs that vary on long and short time scales
Summary
The Sun, together with the Earth’s motion along its orbit, govern changes in the solar–terrestrial environment on time scales ranging from minutes to glacial cycles. The international research community has access to observations from every critical region of the space environment, and an operational framework within which these international comprehensive studies are conducted has been provided by the Scientific Committee on Solar–Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP). During 1998–2002, the SCOSTEP concentrated on four smaller programs pertaining to individual disciplines These disciplines included solar physics in the International Solar Cycle Study (ISCS) program, middle atmosphere physics in the Planetary Scale Mesopause Observing System (PSMOS) program, and equatorial regions in the Equatorial Processes Including Coupling (EPIC) program. Special emphasis was put on the short-term (weather) and long-term (climate) variability of solar activity and its effects/responses in Geospace and Earth’s environment During this time, CAWSES provided both scientific motivation and applications for enhancing the understanding of variations in the Sun–Earth system. In 2009, CAWSES II was launched as the second phase (2009–2013) of the very successful CAWSES program (2004–2008)
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