Shawn Dahl Talk: Space Weather Storms, Global Risks, History & International Collaboration
Description
The presentation will cover space weather storms and detail the global risk of impactful events. The talk will detail how the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) provides decision support to critical technological infrastructure operators, government leadership, and emergency response staff when warranted. Collaboration with international partners is important today because space weather is a global threat. Therefore, the presentation will also cover SWPC collaboration efforts, key messaging, warnings, and related topics. Finally, there will be a look at some historical space weather storms and recent events that had or could have had a much more pronounced impact on our society.
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Shawn Dahl
Mr. Shawn Dahl is a U.S. Air Force (USAF) retiree (22 years) where he spent most of his military career in the field of meteorology and space weather. He retired from active duty in 2007 and held several meteorological forecasting positions with the USAF and the NWS until 2015, when he was hired as a physical scientist and senior space weather forecaster by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). He was selected as SWPC’s first Service Coordinator in August of 2023 and now leads Impact-based Decision Support Services (IDSS) issues, relations, and products. He also manages education/outreach initiatives and efforts, and conducts many customer and partner interactions on behalf of SWPC.
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FAQs
- What is the role of the Space Weather Prediction Center?
To deliver space weather products and services that meet the evolving needs of the nation. The Space Weather Prediction Center gathers, in real time, the available data that describes the state of the Sun, Heliosphere, Magnetosphere, and Ionosphere to form a picture of the environment from the Sun to the Earth. With this information, forecasts, watches, warnings and alerts are prepared by the Space Weather Prediction Center and issued to anyone affected by space weather.
- How do you monitor events on the sun?
SWPC forecasters utilize a variety of ground- and space-based sensors and imaging systems to view activity at various depths in the solar atmosphere. A worldwide network of USAF-sponsored optical observatories also provides space weather forecasters with detailed plain-language discussions and coded reports of activity in and around sunspot groups, as well as other areas of interest on the Sun.
- What types of industries might be impacted by space weather and how?
GPS is affected by adverse space weather when solar eruptions disturb the near-earth plasma layer -- the ionosphere -- and alter the signal characteristics of the wave passing through. The high-precision user community is most affected, estimated to number 333,000 in the U.S. alone by 2017. Satellites are impacted due to both the radiation (for higher altitude) and increased drag (for low-earth-orbit) operations. The economic value of the satellite enterprise is well in excess of $100B. Electric power grids experience the penetration of unwanted induced currents during strong geomagnetic storms. A National Academies of Science report (2009) estimated the impact of a space weather-induced grid collapse to be in the $1 trillion range. Commercial airlines cannot fly over the pole during solar radiation and/or geomagnetic storms. Communication may be blacked out and some impacts to navigation accuracy may occur. Estimates of direct costs for reroutes to accommodate bad space weather go up from, $100K per flight.
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