Scientific Understanding and the Risk from Extreme Space Weather

Abstract

Like all natural hazards, space weather exhibits occasional extreme events over timescales of decades to centuries. Historical events provoked much interest but had little economic impact. However, the widespread adoption of advanced technological infrastructures over the past fifty years gives these events the potential to disrupt those infrastructures - and thus create profound economic and societal impact. However, like all extreme hazards, such events are rare, so we have limited data on which to build our understanding of the events. Many other natural hazards (e.g. flash floods) are highly localised, so statistically significant datasets can be assembled by combining data from independent instances of the hazard recorded over a few decades. But we have a single instance of space weather so we would have to make observations for many centuries in order to build a statistically significant dataset. Instead we must exploit our knowledge of solar-terrestrial physics to find other ways to assess these risks. We discuss three alternative approaches: (a) use of proxy data, (b) studies of other solar systems, and (c) use of physics-based modelling. The proxy data approach is well-established as a technique for assessing the long-term risk from radiation storms, but does not yet provide any means to assess the risk from severe geomagnetic storms. This latter risk is more suited to the other approaches. We need to develop and expand techniques to monitoring key space weather features in other solar systems. To make progress in modelling severe space weather, we need to focus on the physics that controls severe geomagnetic storms, e.g. how can dayside and tail reconnection be modulated to expand the region of open flux to envelop mid-latitudes?