Space Weather and the Trillion Dollar Storm

Space weather is a field of science that is concerned with, well, monitoring weather events originating from space.  This might sound hokey, but it’s important when you consider that a single geomagnetic storm originating from the sun could cause over $1 trillion dollars of losses on Earth.  Yes, you read that correctly – over 1 trillion dollars!

Nuts and Bolts of space Weather

According to NOAA, space weather is defined as “variations in the space environment between the sun and Earth that can affect technologies in space and on Earth.”  The fact that NOAA maintains a space weather prediction center, which utilizes satellites and computer models to predict timing, frequency and severity, should be proof enough that this is something worthy of monitoring. 

This type of activity can render itself in various ways, including the aforementioned geomagnetic activity, solar flares and solar wind (do you see a common theme here?). 

The reason space storms can be particularly catastrophic is that they are global events, much grander in scale than localized hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.  They can disrupt communications across the globe, shut down air travel and, yes, take down the power grid. 

A large space storm is so potentially catastrophic that in early 2019, the Space Weather Research and Forecasting Act was passed (by the Senate as of the time of this writing) in an effort to improve the country’s preparedness for such an event.  And even more recently, the US Geological Survey launched its Geoelectric Field Model to monitor disturbances in our planet’s magnetic field that could be caused by anomalies from space. 

While you may not spend a lot of time incorporating space storms into your emergency plans and processes, it’s certainly important to be aware of the risk since this type of event could theoretically take the grid offline globally for weeks or even months.