In the 2020s, organizations face increasing and ever-changing threats to their operations. There is one threat, however, that has not changed for billions of years and that is space weather. Here instead, the magnitude and extent of any potential disruption has escalated significantly due to our increasing reliance on technology over the last few decades.
In this extract from an article in OpenSpace 33 magazine, Simon Machin, Space Weather Manager at the UK Met Office, explains what the problem is and what organizations need to do to improve their resilience.
Looking up into the daytime sky, it is hard to imagine that a storm on the Sun could have a potentially devastating effect on everyday life on Earth. After all, the Sun is 150 million km away. However, despite that distance, solar activity poses a significant threat to many systems that we rely on every day because it can interfere with the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field. This is further complicated because the speed at which various space weather events arrive at the Earth can be anything from 8 minutes to days. This is not a hazard that we can dodge or shield ourselves from, so it is vital that organizations understand the threat posed by space weather and learn how to improve their resilience and mitigate against its impacts.
Because of the potential risks, severe space weather is included on the national risk registers of many countries. The UK’s National Risk Register notes that impacts may include “regional power disruptions, loss or disruption of global navigation satellite systems and some telecommunications, disruption to aviation, an increase in background radiation doses at high altitudes and in space, and possible disruption to ground-based digital components.”
It also says that “the catalogue of tracked objects on-orbit would be significantly impacted, raising the risk of on-orbit collisions”. Most worryingly, it concludes that “there may also be second order impacts such as fatalities and casualties (for example, in the event of power disruptions)”.
Why space weather matters now
“Solar activity manifests itself as solar flares, radiation storms, coronal mass ejections and geomagnetic storms. This activity varies over an 11-year cycle, although there can be a great deal of variety within that cycle,” explains Simon Machin. “In reality, the flares, storms and coronal mass ejections are ‘phenomena’. ‘Space weather’ is the interaction of those phenomena with the Earth’s magnetosphere and atmosphere, and the technology we use, all the satellites in Earth orbit, any capabilities that are reliant on the atmosphere, and also the effects we see on the ground. These events can impact on a huge range of different engineered electronic systems.
“Space weather has not changed; those phenomena and the 11-year cycle have existed for as long as we can tell. What has changed is our vulnerability to the effects of those phenomena due to our reliance on modern technologies for day-to-day life. Space weather is very interesting from a scientific point of view, but it is the impacts we are really concerned about, especially in the run up to the next solar maximum, which is due around 2025.”
What are the different facets of space weather?
Each of the solar phenomena can have different impacts on Earth. Solar flares can cause solar radio bursts that cause radio interference, while coronal mass ejections (CMEs) can cause geomagnetic storms. Both solar flares and CMEs may give rise to energetic particles that cause radiation storms and enhancements of the Earth’s radiation belts.
Solar flares are hard to detect, with radio bursts travelling at the speed of light and arriving in around 8 minutes – as a result, it is impossible for any spacecraft or ground-based system to provide a warning before a radio burst reaches Earth. Geomagnetic storms, on the other hand, typically take between 18 hours and a few days to reach Earth. Charged particles have a travel time from around 10 minutes to several hours.
If directed towards Earth, these space weather events may have a range of effects, with the severity depending on location. The Earth’s magnetic field protects us to a very large extent from the potential impact of radiation storms. However, at latitudes close to the poles, that protection diminishes. Altitude is also a factor for certain space weather phenomena.
What is at risk?
Spacecraft and aircraft in flight are particularly at risk. Satellites may suffer outages that could cause loss of control, noise in data, orientation problems and/or damage to solar panels – or could even be rendered useless. Aircraft operations could be affected in many ways: these include loss of high frequency (HF) radio communications and satellite navigation systems, and unexpected behaviour due to ‘single event effects’ on electronic systems, while passengers may be exposed to elevated levels of radiation which can lead to a small increase in cancer risk.
Any impact on HF radio and navigation systems will affect maritime users, the military and emergency services. The emerging technology of autonomous vehicles relies heavily on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that could be impacted by space weather disruptions.
Geomagnetic storms also pose risks to power systems. This is because they may induce electric currents in the ground that will run through the least resistive route, which in our modern world is railway lines or power cables. On rail networks this can lead to issues with signalling, while in power grids it can cause problems in managing a stable power load and could potentially damage transformers, causing blackouts. A country’s exposure to the damaging effects of a geomagnetic storm will depend on how infrastructure such as its power grid has been designed and the mitigation measures in place.
“We tend to concentrate more on the geomagnetic storms, because they are the ones that could lead to problems with power grids, including loss of power in some places. Power is one of the key things we focus on, given that without power, pretty well nothing will function as regards modern society. We are now very reliant on space and satellites, so that is also a big concern, but power is fundamental to every technology we have.”
The reality of solar storms
The potential impacts of different solar weather phenomena are increasingly well understood, but when it comes to translating that to real-life situations, it is easy to over-simplify matters.
“We need to think holistically about the resilience of systems that provide us with services. A large satellite in orbit may be really well hardened and able to survive a radiation storm. However, it needs to transmit signals to the ground and the ionosphere can be disturbed by space weather, causing signal scintillation or problems with the signals being transmitted, resulting in the signal being degraded or lost altogether.
“And then there is the ground segment – if power has been lost, there will be issues receiving and processing those signals, and then disseminating the data. If you think about it this way, you can see it is not enough to consider every element in isolation.”
How can organizations get prepared?
Governments and organizations such as the Met Office have long recognized the threats posed by space weather and our knowledge of the science behind it is growing all the time. Yet none of this matters if organizations do not recognize this as a hazard they need to take account of and put plans in place to respond should they be affected.
“First and foremost, organizations need to understand their risk. They should do whatever work is necessary to quantify and identify the risks associated with their own assets and infrastructure. Only by understanding what that risk looks like and what their own risk profile is, can they then understand what kind of service they need and what their critical thresholds are.”
With ever more agencies providing more services relating to space weather, it can be complicated knowing where to start.
“There is a lot of information available related to space weather, but much of it could be completely irrelevant to them, making it hard to pick out what is relevant when a space weather event occurs. They need to know what they do not need to know! In the UK, the Met Office can support organizations with this.”
Main image: ESA’s space weather monitoring mission Vigil is due to launch in 2025 © ESA
