Predicting Space Weather Now Made Easier

Scientists are developing a digital space model around the Earth in order to boost solar storm forecasting and improve infrastructure effects.

Space Weather Understanding

After almost seventy years in the space age, the understanding of space weather remains crude. In contrast to terrestrial weather that is currently forecasted by strong supercomputers with incredible timeliness and accuracy, predictions of space weather have a more hit-or-miss nature.

In most cases, inaccurate forecasts of space weather refers to when one's expectations for viewing auroras are not met. However, humanity is becoming more dependent on certain technologies that are vulnerable to space weather whims. With GPS disruptions and brief radio blackouts, among other things, space weather can affect daily living.

Making Space Weather Predictions Easier

Now, a research team led by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University developed a model that serves as a step closer to bridging the gap between Earth and space weather predictions. However, the scientists admit that it may necessarily take decades for the forecasting and predictions of space weather to catch up fully.

Space physicist Slava Merkin from APL, who also serves as the director of the Center for Geospace Storms (CGS), explains that space weather cannot be predicted without first knowing the physics behind it. Merkin adds that they are constructing a model and conducting science with the model. Through this, they are discovering more about geospace storm physics.

Geospace generally refers to the region surrounding the Earth which covers the upper atmosphere of the planet and the space that surrounds it.

With the novel model MAGE (Multiscale Atmosphere-Geospace Environment), the scientists aim to capture the processes happening in space up to a distance from Earth that spans 2 million kilometers. This coverage is quite huge, being equivalent to four times the Earth-Moon distance. However, the influence of the Earth in the cosmos has an even greater stretch.

The Earth's magnetosphere interacts with solar wind bursts, which is an interaction that leads to space weather events that can be experienced from Earth. The exact process is quite intricate, involving physical interactions in the ionosphere and thermosphere that are minimally understood.

Merkin explains that their greatest challenge comes with holistically treating the system. However, the issue comes with how different physics govern the domains.

In 2020, the team celebrated a success when their nascent model was able to offer unexpected insights regarding the formation of structures in the aurora that resemble beads and that occasionally appear over the polar regions of the Earth before strong geomagnetic storms happen.

The MAGE model then revealed that these polar light pearls surface when the magnetic lines in the magnetotail have a far stretch from the planet prior to the geomagnetic storms. They then slingshot light plasma bubbles towards the Earth. However, the discovery showed space weather forecast difficulties.

Merkin explains that the computer model they are working on must be able to capture the processes that happen on both large and small scales. It must also be able to capture the various physics issues and understand how different domains affect one another.

The model has to capitalize on fewer data points compared to models for forecasting terrestrial weather.

While Merkin and the team can access data that dates back to the start of the space age, there are still major gaps that exist. MAGE could help bridge some gaps by capitalizing on strong supercomputing and intricate measurements gathered by satellites situated in the atmosphere and by radars and other ground sensors.

Merkin explains that as they go, the model gets more complex, with more and more physics being added to it. The ultimate end will then represent geospace and its complexity.

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