Space Weather

This book provides an introduction to the generation and propagation of the solar wind, using examples from historical and current spacecraft and ground-based data. Our Sun is a variable star with a well-defined activity cycle of approximately eleven years. The solar wind varies greatly throughout this activity cycle both in speed and intensity but also in the occurrence of transient events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Our current understanding of these phenomena is discussed along with a description of how to forecast their arrival at Earth and impact on spacecraft and ground-based technologies. If we are to predict the extremes of furure space weather we will need to put modern solar wind observations in context. In the final section of the book, present solar wind conditions are compared with past solar wind observations inferred from sunspot records, geomagnetic data and the abundance of cosmogentic isotopes. Studying the stellar wind generated by other stars will add to this, revealing how typical our solar system is in a wider context. There exists a number of graduate-level textbooks on space physics, but few with a focus on space weather and fewer still with any coverage of actual forecasting issues and techniques. Space weather forecasting is a growing area, with the US and UK national meteorological agencies establishing dedicated space-weather forecasting groups and the insurance industry taking an interest, etc. Thus space weather is beginning to feature more on the postgraduate and advanced undergraduate syllabus.