The eyes of the world are trained on the sun.
The satellite known as SOHO had a projected lifespan of just two years, but three decades after its launch in 1995, it still provides up to three days’ warning when solar storms threaten Earth systems. SOHO, an acronym for the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, was built in Europe, equipped by Europe, Japan and the United States, and orbited by NASA.
Starting in mid-2025, two missions now circling Earth — Aditya-L1, India’s first solar probe, and the dual-satellite Proba-3 mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) — are scheduled to work in tandem to deepen understanding of the sun’s corona and how it affects life on our planet.
Instruments from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the U.S. will ride aboard the ESA’s Vigil satellite in 2031, in part to watch from the side for sunspots before they rotate toward Earth and send solar storms this way.
Nations have their own sovereign agendas to pursue in space, but these solar missions demonstrate that many of them share an interest in understanding, forecasting and mitigating a phenomenon that recognizes no political boundaries — space weather. Now, a truly global response is emerging through the efforts of groups such as the United Nations-affiliated World Meteorological Organization (WMO), based in Geneva.
“The challenges posed by space weather are beyond the capabilities of individual countries and are thus best addressed through coordinated efforts,” said the introduction to the WMO’s latest four-year space weather plan. Space weather comes in forms such as solar wind, flares and radiation; geomagnetic storms; and the fireballs known as coronal mass ejections (CME). The path ahead is a challenging one, according to the WMO plan: “Despite recent progress, techniques are far from meeting users’ needs and the domain could be improved significantly.”
The plan, covering the period through 2027, spells out the potential threat to human health and safety that arises from space weather’s potential to disrupt the interconnectivity of modern society. Critical technologies at risk, according to the document, include those underlying the commercial airline industry, the satellite industry, drilling and surveying operations, power grids, pipelines and satellite-based navigation systems.
“We are all impacted, and we should all be protected and resilient against these threats,” Jesse Andries, WMO space weather scientist, told Apogee. “The threat can be addressed more efficiently if we work together.” Andries compared the task with understanding terrestrial weather, “where there is global cooperation and where we need to model the Earth as a whole. It doesn’t make sense that every country needs to monitor the sun in the same way and that we duplicate the effort. It is better to share that work and share the information.”
Creating frameworks
The WMO is setting up frameworks to enable greater international collaboration — and helping its 190-plus members implement services within their own borders, Andries said. “The objective of WMO is integrating information into a more common system or platform to make it more accessible to those members who, at the moment, have less capacity or capability to acquire or produce the information themselves to make it easier for members to pick up the information and to use it in the proper ways. So it’s not only the information, but also includes guidelines to be able to use the information.”
Information is exchanged among WMO members on best practices, knowledge and insights, and to the extent possible, data on real-time observation, modeling and forecasting. To help accomplish this, the organization is working to add space weather to its premier WMO Information System (WIS) for terrestrial weather, whose 2.0 version is now available online.
At the invitation of the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, three international organizations met in Coimbra, Portugal, in October 2022 to form the International Space Weather Coordination Forum. Each organization plays a role in the new group that is tied to its function: the WMO for facilitating and integration, the International Space Environment Service (ISES) for operations and services, and the Committee on Space Research in Paris for research and development. The groups pledged in the resulting Coimbra Declaration to meet regularly and make progress toward improved international space weather coordination.
Meantime, ad hoc relationships largely dominate international cooperation, involving nations that study space weather. The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, Colorado, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is a world leader in both space weather forecasting and research. “SWPC is the primary warning center for the International Space Environment Service and works with many national and international partners with whom data, products, and services are shared,” ISES says on its website. ISES is made up of 22 regional warning centers, four associate warning centers and one collaborative expert — the ESA.
SWPC works hand in hand with its defense counterparts in the 2nd Weather Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, and has helped nations advance their efforts to understand the impact of space weather. One example is the U.K. Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre (MOSWOC), one of a handful of 24/7 prediction centers around the globe. Solar storms were added to the U.K. National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies in 2011. MOSWOC provides information “to help build the resilience of UK infrastructure and industries in the face of space weather events, thereby supporting continued economic growth,” the center says on its website.
“The U.K. is the closest, most trusted relationship we have,” Clinton Wallace, SWPC director, told Apogee. SWPC works closely with all fellow members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K. There’s another rising space weather player, Wallace said. “China’s been doing quite a bit. We went to a conference in South Korea over the summer — we don’t interact much outside operations — and we were taken by how many capabilities they’re putting in place. You have satellite missions — some are unique.”
Australia’s progress belies its relatively small population, said Bill Murtagh, then SWPC program coordinator on history and strategic alignment. “We have regular calls every couple of months,” Murtagh told Apogee. He was delighted to see that a nationwide exercise on space weather he attended, conducted by the National Emergency Management Agency of Australia, drew some 300 people.
“There’s a constant feedback loop, a lot of international communication on forecasts just day to day,” said Maj. Ross Malugani, Air Force liaison to SWPC. “Like, ‘We believe that this CME may or may not be Earth-directed. Do you concur? Do you disagree? Let’s talk it through.’ Somebody’s sensors may be facing the sun at a given point, somebody may have an active satellite in an area that can detect something different from what another nation has. That open communication is pivotal.”
Said Murtagh, “Space weather is a global threat, and it requires a coordinated global response, especially with the globalization of society. We learned a lot about this during COVID, with its supply chain issues. We have dependency around the globe.”
Centers across Europe
NATO, the Europe-North America military alliance, also aims to incorporate information from SWPC into its operations, Malugani said. “NATO, through the Air Force, is trying to work with SWPC on adjusting some (SWPC) processes and products to meet the needs of the alliance,” Malugani said. “It would be designed for operational usage across the board.”
Europe is experiencing a proliferation of space weather centers that serve host nations while also sharing with the continentwide Space Weather Service Network of the ESA (ESA-SWE), said Malugani, who was stationed in the region. “Everybody over there wants their own, but they’re also contributing to the group,” he said. ESA-SWE is a work in progress, its website says, with the goal to provide operational information that can be used in “mitigating and preventing the impact of hazards from space, protecting our planet, activities and infrastructures.” The network operates from locations in Belgium, Germany and elsewhere, and is organized to provide 39 services over eight service domains targeting specific groups of end users. Already, the network operates a coordination center and a data center; a hotline for users of its data; and five expert service centers, each specializing in a different topic: solar weather, heliospheric weather, space radiation, ionospheric weather and geomagnetic conditions.
One global effort to track space weather is the collection of 35-plus ground-based sensors known as Super DARN, for Dual Auroral Radar Network. Tracing its origins to Scandinavia in the 1970s, Super DARN now counts scientific involvement from 20 organizations, including from Canada, China, France, Italy, Japan, South Africa, the U.K. and the U.S. The radars are synchronized to monitor conditions in Earth’s magnetosphere — the magnetic bubble that protects Earth from direct impact by solar wind, the Canadian Super DARN website says. Changes in the speed and density of the solar wind, as well as the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field, are linked to disturbances that produce the northern lights, as well as detrimental effects on infrastructure.
What’s more, milestones in the understanding of space weather have emerged from nations worldwide. Amateur German astronomer Samuel Heinrich Schwabe pegged the duration of solar activity during the mid-1800s, determining that the sun rotates on its axis once in 27 days and that sunspots and other activity increase and decrease over approximately an 11-year cycle. German geophysicist Julius Bartels introduced the Kp index in the 1930s, providing a vital measure of energy input from the solar wind to Earth. In addition, one of the most reliable and consistent indicators of solar activity — known as the F10.7 index, for the radio wave designator 10.7 centimeters — was discovered during research after World War II by Arthur Covington and his colleagues at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Ontario.
Civil aviation monitors
Civil aviation may serve as a model for international cooperation on the effects of solar weather. Space weather can degrade high-frequency radio transmission and satellite navigation signals, disrupt navigation systems and cause avionics equipment errors. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) reached out to groups including the WMO for help, and since 2018, four partnerships have conducted worldwide monitoring for the authority on a two-week rotation. The partnerships are the United States; the Chinese Communist Party and Russia; nine European nations using the acronym PECASUS; and ACFJ for Australia, Canada, France and Japan. South Africa operates a regional center.
The global reach of the ICAO, also affiliated with the U.N., helped streamline collaboration to protect airlines and other civil aviation from space weather, said Andries of the WMO. “For civil aviation, there was a primary international body that could clearly take the lead. For other user groups and systems, this is not always as clear-cut,” he said, in a reference to satellite operations, power grids and other areas vulnerable to space weather. “Some other domains are more driven at the local level — through relations there between the local provider and end user.”
One group that promotes collaboration among operators of terrestrial weather satellites is the Coordinating Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS), with a secretariat hosted in Germany by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. Space weather has been added as a baseline by CGMS, and space agencies are joining as members, committing to provide long-term observations in the domain, Andries said.
The ESA’s Vigil mission represents a new level of international cooperation, with one agency pledging to operate in an orbit where observations will complement those from another orbit. In this case, they occupy relatively stable Lagrange points, designated as L1 through L5, where the gravitational pull of Earth and the sun is roughly equal. The aging observatory SOHO and other satellites providing data about the sun operate in L1. Vigil will operate in L5, to the side of the sun as it faces Earth — providing a kind of stereo view that solar observers have enjoyed with earlier research satellites but not with a satellite designed for real-time operations, like Vigil is.
“It doesn’t make sense that everyone send their spacecraft to L1,” Andries said. “Better one does L1, the other does L5. This is where global cooperation can increase the efficiency of your observances.” Another example: Space weather is not only about the drivers coming from the sun but also about the impact on Earth — say, the section of the upper atmosphere known as the ionosphere that reflects and modifies radio waves used for communication and navigation. “So, to have a proper global view, you need observations at many geographic locations,” Andries said. “You need networks around the world, measurements around the world, to thereby get better coverage and a better idea how this is different in different locations.”
Tailoring forecasts
One goal of the WMO’s new four-year plan is developing and communicating more and better information for specific use by the interests that are coming to rely upon it — aviation, satellites and power distribution, among them. As the plan said, “focusing on the sectors where internationally coordinated responses are required.” This is a priority, too, for SWPC and other space weather centers around the world, and it involves quickly translating pure research — traditionally, one side of the space weather community — into the real-time forecasts, operations and mitigation that make up the other side. “Going, for example, from a forecast of a G4 geomagnetic storm,” deemed severe on a scale from G1 to G5, “to building products that inform on the potential geomagnetically induced currents in the power system is a huge challenge,” Andries said. “Growing from more general forecasts into forecasts or products or services that are closer to what the user needs, what he can expect to see in his actual system. To be able to do that, you also need to do the research into those areas.”
International partners in new solar satellite missions are hoping to advance understanding about the workings of the sun. Both the Aditya-L1 from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the ESA’s Proba-3 carry advanced coronagraphs that block the intense light from the sun — creating an artificial eclipse — to enable study of its outer atmosphere or corona. “Solar coronal activity is the primary source of space weather disturbances,” NASA says in a web post from its Science Mission Directorate. “Resolving the mystery of coronal energy sources is a cornerstone for building reliable forecasts of high-energy solar radiation and particle fluxes.” Scientists from India and the ESA have met to plan their forthcoming joint solar observations, the Hans News Service reported in December 2024. “Proba-3’s specific time windows for observations align with our goals,” said Dr. Dipankar Banerjee, director of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology. “Coordinated campaigns will benefit both Indian and ESA scientific communities.” In addition, the ESA has supported ISRO’s Aditya-L1 through prelaunch validation of new flight dynamics software and by providing deep space communication services, the agency reported on its website.
In May 2024, shortly after they were activated in their L1 position, instruments aboard Aditya-L1 captured images of a severe geomagnetic storm. Among the activity shown was the way solar flares heat up the chromosphere layer above the sun’s surface and how the energy is deposited. Proba-3, short for Project for On-Board Autonomy, launched in December 2024 and will circle Earth every 20 hours in an elliptical orbit, as high as 60,530 kilometers and as low as 600 kilometers. ESA describes Proba-3 as the world’s first precision formation flying mission, in which the pair of satellites will move together as a virtual single structure to prove formation flying technologies and conduct rendezvous experiments.
Space weather priority
Today, the impact of space weather is drawing more attention worldwide and within the WMO, some 17 years after the organization issued its first report on whether to take up the challenge. It is one need in a world full of needs, Andries said. “Within all of the topics addressed by WMO, space weather is a fairly small, though growing, component.”
“Certainly, it has risen in priority for many countries that have, in the past decade, made the effort to investigate their vulnerability to space weather events,” he said. “In many cases, this has led to dedicated efforts to improve the resilience and the mitigation measures that they have in place against space weather as a natural hazard.” People worldwide have also come to depend on the services that vast new constellations of satellites provide. With the rapidly increasing number of satellites in orbit, there is an increased demand for predictability, Andries said, “because there are more space assets to protect. There are more players, more companies. This will drive service developments, leading to better services.”
Meantime, work continues in the effort to bring about the provisions of the WMO space weather plan. “Progress has certainly been made. Even if progress sometimes just means to have obtained a better idea of what road to take and the next steps to do. The plans for sharing through the new WIS system, as well as for integrating the space weather observing systems into the WMO collaboration frameworks, are now more concrete than before.”
Andries advises seeing progress in the context of what’s been achieved in terrestrial weather, which also evolved slowly and steadily. And he notes the potential impact of the latest human achievements. “With new approaches to deal with the problem, I’m thinking of artificial intelligence and machine learning, our capability to process data has increased and will continue to increase. In any case, or even more so, we continue to rely on observation data and the benefits of sharing data. Certainly, services, including forecasts, will keep improving in the years and decades to come.”