Juha-Pekka Luntama, head of the European Space Agency’s Space Meteorological Office, details the office’s key activities to promote user knowledge of space weather and inform actions to protect infrastructure from adverse effects.
Space weather is the physical and phenomenological states of natural spatial environments affected by solar activity. It is driven primarily by actions near the surface of the sun that can affect the Earth’s space environment. In addition to the sun, fluctuations in non-chlorine sources of energy particles such as cosmic rays in galaxies are also considered cosmic weather.
Weather in severe spaces can have detrimental effects on society and infrastructure on the planet, causing disruption to the power grid, transportation and satellite operations. Therefore, it is extremely important to monitor and predict space weather phenomena to inform palliative action.
The European Space Agency (ESA) Space and Meteorological Agency works to provide timely and accurate information on key spacecraft and ground infrastructure owners and ground infrastructure to mitigate the adverse effects of space weather. It recognizes the importance of constant surveillance of the sun and space environment from various vantage points. Based on European established experience and assets for space weather observation and modelling, the Space Weather Service has developed the concept of federal space-wind service provisioning to avoid duplication and ensure that existing assets and resources play an important role in ESA’s space weather systems. These services are provided through the Space Weather Services Network.
For more information about the space and weather office work, Georgie Purcell spoke with Juha-Pekka Luntama, Director of Space and Meteorology at the ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC).
What is the main purpose of the Space Weather Office?
Its main purpose is to help develop European capabilities and protect infrastructure and society from the effects of solar events and space weather. Additionally, the results of these developments can be tested and verified before moving into the operational framework of space weather services that Europe hopes to establish in the near future.
Can you outline some of the important focuses and priorities of your office right now?
Currently there are three important areas. It’s important to start by discussing user engagement. Because everything we do is driven by the needs of our users. We are always in touch with our users. Presents all developments, products, services and tools produced within the Space Safety Program’s Space Weather Activities Framework. We will take this into consideration in further development and coordination of these services to collect user feedback and ensure that users’ needs are met. An important aspect of weather in operational spaces is the viability of the information provided to the user. It’s not enough to just tell them something interesting going on in space. Users must be able to make decisions based on the information we provide.
The second area we are working on is the ability to provide this information. The most challenging part of the weather in space is predicting solar power and its impact on the Earth. This is an area where more feature development is needed. As long as there is sufficient space weather monitoring system on the ground and on the universe, it can be detected when solar events occur. However, in some cases, taking efficient mitigation actions to protect sensitive infrastructure takes longer than after solar events are detected. This means that you need to be able to provide reliable warnings for impending solar power before any impending solar event takes place. Such warnings require a better understanding of solar physics than we have today. We work very closely with colleagues from the ESA Science Bureau who work with missions like Solar Orbiter, creating better science and advancements in science. These advances will then be used to improve the weather capabilities of the operating space.
The third and final region is the observation system. We can promote these services to end users as Europe is building its capacity to improve its independence in monitoring the impact of spatial weather and spatial weather.
Please tell us more about the Space Weather Services Network and how it is progressing.
With constant room for improvement, I think the development of the space weather services network is still an ongoing work. The keyword here is “network.” The service networks European spatial weather functions. We already carry over 50 European space weather expert groups, laboratories, research centres and industries, and work together to utilize space weather monitoring data to produce space weather products and services for our users.
We recently held a meeting in which network participants presented their achievements from the first period of the space safety program. The features that this network can offer to end users is a major step. The next challenge is in the area of user interfaces. This information is accessible to enable users to make informed decisions very quickly.
This is an “Operational Research” (R2O) platform that helps you move the science and engineering prototypes of service functions to something ready to migrate to an operational framework. The network will continue further development in the next period of the program.
What are the main challenges when it comes to monitoring spatial weather? And how do you deal with these?
The main challenge is that there is still little observational data. It may seem like there are plenty of satellites and missions, but when you compare the weather to a network of weather monitoring, there are only a few sampling points. Now, we are trying to make predictions based on very little information at the end. We are working to build further capabilities, both in space and on the ground. It should be noted that many space weather observations can be made from the ground, the area surrounding space agency activities. We do this where we know there is a gap between Europe and ground-based observational capabilities.
One of our program’s flagship space-based missions is to stay up all night. This is an entirely new ability to observe the sun from the side, from the fifth Lagrange (L5) point. Other missions currently underway include an Aurora mission to monitor the Aurora and a sword designed to measure the Earth’s radiation belt. What’s very important is that we work internationally with our colleagues, not only in the US, but also in Korea, Japan, South Africa and Australia. Ensures that feature development is coordinated to avoid duplication. Exchange data with a focus on specific complementary missions and observations. This is an advantageous situation for both parties. If you have better coverage, more data, and you can exchange data and use it together, everyone wins.
What are your hopes for the future?
When it comes to space weather forecasts, we hope to use artificial intelligence (AI) to get better spatial weather forecasts. Additionally, time is important for space weather prediction, allowing for faster execution models to be developed. Most recently, ESA launched an ESA Space High Performance Computing (HPC) environment in ESRIN, Italy. Essentially, this is an ESA-owned supercomputer that we use to improve the weather forecasts of the space. This is very closely related to long-term goals, making data available from all future space weather missions.
We would like to conduct research to develop space weather models. The goal is to have what is called “end-to-end space weather ability.” When you detect something under the sun, there is a complete data processing chain to see what the impact on the Earth is. For example, it is immediately possible to estimate how much this event will affect the power grid or another critical infrastructure on the globe.
For space weather monitoring, in addition to the European space weather mission, we hope that South Korea will build a mission that will place the spacecraft at its fourth Lagrange (L4) point. When there are more observation points around the sun, we hope that we can make predictions of solar events much better than what we can do today.
Do you think there are other things you need to deal with to accelerate spatial weather monitoring?
As mentioned at the beginning, there are no European spatial weather services yet in Europe. ESA is a development agency that allows you to develop, test and verify features, but there is no place yet where this feature can operate 24/7. Establishing this is important for Europe. Because we know from our research that large spatial weather events can cost Europe hundreds of billions of euros. The ESA is in dialogue with the European Commission on the topic and predicts that the European Union and the European Commission will become the governing bodies of Europe’s such operational spatial weather systems.
This article also appears in Space Special Focus Publication.
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