Romvær -betydning for Forsvaret

Space weather is a term that sometimes rises to the surface of news media, especially if the result is problems for our modern society. Space weather has its origin on the Sun. Our Sun is the source of a continuous stream of plasma that is ejected into space. The name of this phenomenon is the solar wind. It is the reason why aurora is seen both in the north and south of our planet. Sometimes it happens that the Sun ejects larger amounts of plasma and radiation into space than during “normal” situations. This may create smaller or larger problems for us on Earth depending on whether the “eruption” is directed such that we are in the trajectory of the stream of plasma. With varying time intervals it happens that the solar eruption is extremely large and causes serious problems for technological systems on Earth and satellites in orbit. The most famous incident happened back in 1859 and destroyed telegraph systems in Europe and North-America, and aurora was seen worldwide. Such an incident today would cause serious problems, and even destruction, of advanced infrastructure that society has become more and more dependent upon. Both military and civilian systems are at risk. One thing is that power supply to our homes are cut for some time, another that our society are at risk of being set several years back in time technologically speaking. The technology will of course not disappear, but we will have to replace large amounts of electronics that have been damaged or destroyed. It may take several years before we able to do so if the event in question is large enough and are directed towards Earth. Unfortunately, it is relatively little that has been done over the years, which should worry all decision makers, both military and civilian. Since more and more off-the-shelf electronics are used in satellites as well as advanced systems on Earth, it is only a question of time before we experience a serious situation related to space weather. In this report we will describe the physical processes that may cause problems for electronic systems in space as well as on Earth through interaction between particle radiation from the Sun and the Earth’s magnetic field. Thereafter, we will see how the situation is, both nationally and internationally, when it comes to the prediction of space weather and how difficult it is to predict large eruptions from the Sun. Furthermore, we will describe how space weather influence social security and how society valuates possible problems this may cause. We will argue that space weather may cause much larger problems than foreseen by the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection (DSB). Finally, we summarize our main findings as well as making some suggestions for improvement. These should only be regarded as a starting point for preventing possible consequences of severe space weather.