What is space weather?

What is space weather?

Space weather is the natural variability of the space environment caused by the Sun, which can damage satellites and disrupt important satellite services.

Space weather has similarities to “ordinary” weather on Earth: They are both powered by the Sun, they both describe the natural variability of quantities like density, temperature, and wind, and they share some other physical concepts and words such as storms and precipitation. An important difference though is that space weather involves electrically charged particles, whose motion is affected by the magnetic fields of the Earth and Sun.

Of particular concern are large explosions on the Sun called coronal mass ejections,  which can hurl billions of tons of charged particles towards Earth. When these disturbances arrive, they trigger extreme space weather whose impacts includes:

• geomagnetic storms that cause very bright aurora (the northern and southern lights) at lower latitudes than normal
• heating of the upper atmosphere that causes the orbits of satellites and space debris to change, risking catastrophic collisions
• radiation surges that can damage satellites
• electrical disturbances that disrupt power grids and GPS devices

The BAS space weather team is helping to protect us all from these risks