Space Weather and Natural Hazards

Abstract

Space weather occupied an important place in AGU's inaugural Science Policy Conference (http://sites.agu.org/spconference/). The conference was held 30 April to 2 May in Washington, D. C., with four tracks-the Arctic, natural hazards, natural resources, and oceans-and space weather rightly occupied a slot in the natural hazards track. This was the natural location for space weather, as the solar and terrestrial space environments are indeed hazards to the successful operations of many current-day technical systems, from communications to electricity to navigation to resource exploration. The diversity of technical and nontechnical papers related to applications of space research published in this journal reflects the hazards and potential solutions. Space weather is one of the “grand challenges” for disaster reduction that has been included in the National Science and Technology Council's Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction (e.g., http://www.sdr.gov/185820_Space_FINAL.pdf). The space weather session at the conference was composed of a panel of four speakers plus a moderator, who, among them, addressed the outstanding contemporary issues facing the design, implementation, and operations of technical systems. History shows that space weather processes often provide implementation and operational surprises of new electrical technologies in essential industries, including communications (landline and cable, satellite-based, ocean cable, wireless over a very wide frequency band), electric power distribution, navigation (GPS, magnetic), and resource exploration (ground-based, aerial). The historical record also demonstrates that as the complexity of systems increases, including their interconnectedness and interoperability, the systems can become more susceptible to space weather effects. Understanding of the solar and terrestrial space environments has grown in parallel with the increasing complexity of the systems affected by these environments. This growth in fundamental understanding has been necessary in order to design, implement, and operate robust systems under adverse space weather conditions. These topics were all addressed by the panelists at the conference, as well as in the question and answer period. Contemporary examples of concerns and of possible mitigation techniques were presented. A particularly interesting example of mitigation techniques are the revolutionary uses of navigation and the design challenges posed by space weather with “precision” farming that uses GPS technology. Those of us who have worked for years in various aspects of space weather-from pure research to detailed engineering applications of knowledge acquired-have long known that studies of the solar-terrestrial environment were not just intellectually challenging but also critical to the successful implementation and operation of essential technical elements of contemporary society. Thus, the policy issues involved with space weather research as fostered by AGU through its meetings and publications certainly deserved to be highlighted at this inaugural Science Policy Conference in our nation's capital. I look forward to space weather being similarly featured in future forums where important policy matters arising from contemporary frontier research are featured. Louis J. Lanzerotti is editor of Space Weather and a distinguished research professor of physics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark (ljl@njit.edu). He is retired from Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories.