Collaboration Tracks Solar Streams Disrupting Communications

A university-government partnership is making operational a prediction model designed for weather forecasting, and put into use to track solar activity that disrupts communications. The Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM) at Boston University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center reported the news of the collaboration today at the annual American Meteorological Society meeting in Seattle, Washington.

The large-scale, physics-based space weather prediction model will provide forecasters with a one-to-four day advance warning of high-speed streams of solar plasma and Earth-directed coronal mass ejections. These streams from the Sun can severely disrupt or damage space- and ground-based communications systems and pose hazards to satellite operations.

The development comes in response to the growing critical need to protect the global communications infrastructure and other sensitive technologies from severe space weather disruptions. CISM is a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center made up of 11 member institutions that studies the system-science of Sun-to-Earth space weather.

Photo: Temari 09/Flickr

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