Weather Forecasting For Outer Space

By Bill Korbel

If someone were to ask you if there was weather in outer space, you’d probably answer no. There is no atmosphere out there, so how could there be weather? Well, there are storms in space and they can be every bit as dangerous the earthbound variety.

 A few days ago I spent some time at the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. I’ll wager you had no idea such as place even existed, but it does, and the forecasts made there have a huge impact on our lives.

 Like earth weather, space weather starts with the sun. From time to time, storms and explosions on the sun shoot high energy particles towards the earth and these solar particles can not only be lethal to astronauts but can have disastrous affects right here on the earth. For instance, strong geomagnetic storms can cause widespread power grid failures if precautions are not taken before the storm hits.

Is a cell phone or blackberry an important part of your life? Communication satellites can be damaged if certain procedures are not followed to protect them. The GPS system in your car can fail. That’s really not so important, but GPS is used in aviation for everything from navigation to landing in bad weather. Losing a GPS signal in an airplane can be very dangerous. Long range radio can be knocked out. That means re-routing long range airliners because they must always be in radio contact. So those trans-polar flights may take several hours longer. The radiation produced by solar particles can be a danger for crews and passengers flying across the north pole. Airlines must monitor storms so their crews don’t exceed safe levels of exposure. Several airlines make sure any pregnant crew members do not fly when solar storms are hitting the planet.

For more information, The web site for the Space Weather Prediction Center is:  http://www.swpc.noaa.gov Here are two more:  www.spaceweather.com and: http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/spaceweather.htm

Bill Korbel