Published by the STCE - this issue : 11 Oct 2019. The Solar-Terrestrial Centre of Excellence (STCE) is a collaborative network of the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, the Royal Observatory of Belgium and the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium. |
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A special report from international experts was released on October 10, 2019, to explain the challenges of space weather and provide a set of recommendations against space weather radiation hazards.
Space weather refers to the environmental conditions in space as influenced by solar activity. To prevent radiation hazards on satellites and spacecrafts and health risks for astronautes, a thorough knowledge of space weather is of high importance.
The report, spearheaded by the European Science Foundation’s European Space Science Committee, is directed to the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Union (EU) and their respective member states. It highlights the need of strong coordination between members states and European bodies and organisation.
David Berghmans (STCE), is co-author of the report. You can read it on: https://www.swsc-journal.org/articles/swsc/abs/2019/01/swsc190036/swsc190036.html
Press release of the European Science Foundation: http://www.esf.org/news-media/news-press-releases/article/how-can-europe-explore-further-understand-more-and-prepare-better-for-adverse-space-weather-effects/
Solar activity was very low. A small but inactive sunspot (NOAA Active Region 2749) was visible on the solar disk on 1 and 2 October, ending a 27 days spotless stretch.
Geomagnetic activity ranged from quiet to active conditions, with the active episodes occurring during the enhanced solar wind conditions early in the week, i.e. on 30 September and 1 October.
Solar flare activity was very low during the week.
In order to view the activity of this week in more detail, we suggest to go to the following website from which all the daily (normal and difference) movies can be accessed: http://proba2.oma.be/ssa
This page also lists the recorded flaring events.
A weekly overview movie can be found here (SWAP week 497). http://proba2.oma.be/swap/data/mpg/movies/weekly_movies/weekly_movie_2019_09_30.mp4
Details about some of this week's events can be found further below.
If any of the linked movies are unavailable they can be found in the P2SC movie repository here
http://proba2.oma.be/swap/data/mpg/movies/
The Space Weather Briefing presented by the forecaster on duty from Sept 29 to Oct 6. It reflects in images and graphs what is written in the Solar and Geomagnetic Activity report.
The pdf-version: http://www.stce.be/briefings/20191007_SWbriefing.pdf
The automatically running presentation: http://www.stce.be/briefings/20191007_SWbriefing.ppsm
The figure shows the time evolution of the Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) (in red) during the last week at three locations:
a) in the northern part of Europe(N61°, 5°E)
b) above Brussels(N50.5°, 4.5°E)
c) in the southern part of Europe(N36°, 5°E)
This figure also shows (in grey) the normal ionospheric behaviour expected based on the median VTEC from the 15 previous days.
The VTEC is expressed in TECu (with TECu=10^16 electrons per square meter) and is directly related to the signal propagation delay due to the ionosphere (in figure: delay on GPS L1 frequency).
The Sun's radiation ionizes the Earth's upper atmosphere, the ionosphere, located from about 60km to 1000km above the Earth's surface.The ionization process in the ionosphere produces ions and free electrons. These electrons perturb the propagation of the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals by inducing a so-called ionospheric delay.
See http://stce.be/newsletter/GNSS_final.pdf for some more explanations ; for detailed information, see http://gnss.be/ionosphere_tutorial.php